 
### BLOODMASTER

### The Courtship of Apollyon

### By

Mary Quijano

Copyright 1989 by Mary L Quijano

Published by Mary Quijano on Smashwords 2013

* * *

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

First Edition License Notes

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### BLOODMASTER

Part One

The Courtship Of Apollyon

And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.

Revelations 9:11

Chapter 1

Sunday, June 11th

Rome, Italy

The red "No Smoking – Fasten Seat Belts" sign had lit up a few minutes ago, flashing its message sequentially though five different languages per minute. Now the cabin lights flared on as well, while weary flight attendants – still managing to paste on bright smiles over the freshly applied make-up after ten hours in the air – began the final chore of gently waking the few remaining rumpled and snoring passengers not yet aware that their transatlantic flight from New York to Rome was nearly at an end.

Moments later the jumbo jet began its descent with a stomach floating lurch, the powerful engines back-roaring noisily as its nose tilted upward and belly sank. An elderly nun crossed herself and began counting the rosary in not quite silent prayer. As the plane began its wide lazy spiral back to earth, its stiff swept back wings tilted downward to give the bleary-eyed passengers their first glimpse of the magical sparkling city below, the rolling green countryside beyond.

Archbishop Quillans stretched the cramped muscles of his long sinewy legs one last time before pulling his seat to the required upright position for landing. Rather than the official vestments of his office, he was nattily attired in a neat wrinkle-resistant suit of charcoal grey silk blend over a pale blue Yves St. Laurent shirt and silver-grey silk tie. The close cropped military cut of his salt and pepper hair was equally precise; even his cool blue eyes above the lightly tanned face had resolved not to redden under the barrage of canned air they'd endured, like those of his fellow passengers.

He looked more like a successful business executive than a humble successor to the twelve apostles of Jesus. But he wasn't using his title or office for this journey to Rome.

"Not this leg of it anyway," he mused, his eyes distant, focused on destiny. "The Pope is dead, long live the Pope," he smiled.

He felt it, that destiny, felt it deep inside him with a sense of terrible excitement, half exultation, half horror. He had no justification for these feelings, no promise given or even alluded to in the terse phone call he'd received yesterday from the Cardinal Secretary of State, to get to the Vatican on the next available flight. But this knowledge spoke to him in a voice that could not be denied, of a time now come for his entrance on this great stage, time for his part to be played.

He glanced out the window, wondering if he could see Vatican City from here, but his was the up tilted side of the airplane, displaying only swift tufts of screaming clouds, a vibrant blue backdrop of sky.

One cloud was darker than the others, and for just a moment it took on the shape of a face – a ghostly face, vacant eyes, mouth a long oval O that grew and grew in a silent howl of wrath like that painting....what was it, oh yes, The Scream. He shook his head, suppressing a smirk as the cloud disappeared behind the sinking aircraft.

Suddenly the vivid memory of another dark face appeared, the ghetto priest....what was his name? Muldoon? Yes, the San Francisco Archdiocese's token shoeshine boy, all up in himself as pastor of the poor and downtrodden, bursting into the bishopric office without an appointment carrying a tape of some sort and babbling an absurd tale of demonic possession like some superstitious darkie. He had the nerve to present a petition for exorcism – like _that_ was ever done anymore! Quillans had set the fool straight on church policy regarding such matters, unequivocally: Schizophrenia, not demonic possession; Psychiatric intervention, not archaic religious ceremonies with holy water, beads, incense and arcane litanies. What did this idiot think we were in, the dark ages? Damn simple minded.....Rarely had he felt such instant loathing for a man: Couldn't even say why.

Then again last night, as he waited for the taxi to take him to the airport – already a little irritated that he had to forego the official limousine due to the secretive nature of this trip – the priest called again, demanding immediate action on the petition for exorcism due to some purported new crisis. Demanding! A subordinate, a black subordinate at that, ordering _him_ the Archbishop of San Francisco! Just remembering the effrontery made him shake with anger even now, a rage of fury that filled his belly with snakes. Though again, he couldn't say exactly why.

But even as this thought faded another rose, the memory of the soft, hesitant voice of the woman on the tape, the woman Muldoon claimed was being plagued by demons, telling her story. Something about her voice – or was it her incredible tale – set up an itch at the back of his skull, like something he should know about or remember, but couldn't.

Even now that lost memory itched, and because he couldn't find it and scratch it, it irritated.

Chapter 2

Friday June 9th

San Francisco

Marija Draekins was smart, attractive...and haunted.

She wasn't sure exactly when this last characteristic had surfaced: Although it had manifest in undeniable clarity shortly after she'd picked up that old book on Astral Projection at a yard sale, she had the feeling it had been simmering in her core like an incipient disease for some time before that, just waiting for the tipping point.

She'd finally left her own apartment, where the hauntings were centered, and moved in temporarily with her fiancé to escape them. That, and a few days off from work seemed to have done the trick, as she'd slept perfectly and dreamlessly the past three nights.

This morning the day rose uncharacteristically warm and clear for a June morning in San Francisco, brimming sunshine, hope, and a sense of rejuvenation. Marija awoke convinced that the strange dreams and presences that had been haunting her since that first terrifying episode ten days earlier had left her apartment by now, had given up waiting for her to return home and moved on, perhaps to find some other unfortunate soul to terrorize.

"Sorry, but _their_ problem," she thought mercilessly.

Buoyant with renewal, she sang in the shower, sang all the way to work with the car stereo on full blast – pumping the accelerator in time to the beat – and was still humming cheerfully as she entered the front doors of Brotherton's Sportswear Mfg, Inc. just before 7 am.

She even managed a warm smile and friendly greeting for Betty the receptionist, who looked up from her efforts to fasten the strap on her high heeled sandal and breathe at the same time, puzzled and hopeful. Usually Marija didn't give her the time of day.

"Oh, hi right back atcha, MJ," she smiled tentatively, straightening up and trying to pull the too-tight pink knit dress back down over her voluptuous curves. "Feeling better now?"

"Nope, doctor said it was terminal so I thought I'd spend my last days here...Call of Duty, you know," MJ deadpanned as she continued past her into the large inner office complex where her own desk with its perpetual pile of unfinished paperwork awaited.

"OMG, you're back!! I am sooo glad to see you; you cannot imagine the kind of shit you know who has been giving me to do since you've been gone!" This outburst was from Shelly, the other production assistant and nominally Marija's best friend for the past six years. "You _are_ all okay now?" she nodded hopefully.

"Yeah, Shel', I'm fine; but I'm really sorry my absence made extra work for you."

"Nah, I just got the fun stuff you usually handle, like trying to appease grumpy customers screaming about their overdue orders or harassing our suppliers about late deliveries....only to find out that they put a hold on our shipment because dip wad in there," she indicated Mr. Wellesby's office with a jerk of her chin; "hasn't paid them in six months. Honestly MJ, I don't know how you deal with it day after day; I'd get sick too."

"He shouldn't have dumped that crap on you," Marija exclaimed in mild outrage. "It's _his_ responsibility to deal with customers and suppliers, but he's gotten so used to dumping that job onto me that I guess he figured he could unload it on you too. I've half a mind to go tell him so right now!"

"Listen to the other half and let it go," Shelly said tersely. "It's not worth it... you know what they say about shit rolling downhill: just part of the old ballgame."

"I thought the saying was it floats to the top," MJ corrected with a grin.

"That works too: At this little shop of horrors it's everywhere," Shelly laughed, a short explosive bark.

MJ nodded, trying to smile, but something the older woman had said was bugging her.

"Why," she demanded.

"Why what?"

"Why'd you say 'let it go'? Is there something going on I should know about?"

"Ah, it may be nothing, but..."

"But?"

"I heard Wellesby on the phone yesterday talking to Mr. B."

"And?"

"And it sounded like he was getting chewed out for something pretty good, so I kind of tilted my ear towards his office door," she shrugged; "and I heard him mention your name a couple of times. I couldn't hear exactly what was being said, but I got the impression that the little toad was trying to shift the blame onto you for whatever it was got Mr. B's panties in a bunch."

MJ nodded: That would be just like Mr. Wellesby.

"Anyway," Shelly warned; "I heard him say something about putting you on probation when you returned from sick leave."

"Probation!!" The word exploded from her, much louder than she intended. As the receptionist peered curiously around the doorjamb, Marija lowered her voice to a fuming whisper. "That ugly frog faced little jerk gets twice the salary I do and for what? Picking his nose? He couldn't even do that right without video instructions and hints....but he's got the balls to put _me_ on probation??!!"

"MJ, it's a job," Shelly said, putting her hand on the younger woman's shoulder. "You either want it or you don't. If you don't, go tell Wellesby to take a flying fuck at the moon, and more power to you. But if you do want it, or _need_ it, you just have to accept the fact that..."

"Yeah yeah, I know. Shit rolls downhill," Marija sighed in exasperation. "Only does there have to be such a constant avalanche of the stuff?"

The news she was to be put on probation had faded the bloom off her day, and all morning, as she caught up on her memos and correspondence, re-familiarizing herself with the various jobs in the shop, MJ vacillated between anger and depression over the manager's treachery and lies.

At 11AM, shortly before the temporary reprieve of lunch – and just when she was beginning to think perhaps Shelly might have misheard or misunderstood what Wellesby was saying – the intercom on her desk buzzed.

"Ms. Draekins," Fred Wellesby's high pitched nasal voice piped through the metal box; "please drop whatever you are doing and come into my office immediately."

The line clicked dead before she had a chance to reply. Her stomach knotted, her legs weak as they propelled her reluctantly across the room and through the heavy door into the production manager's office. As the door wheezed shut behind her, it sent a little chill of foreboding prickling across the back of her hairline.

A scattering of reports were spread across the highly polished – and seldom used – surface of the oversized desk which dwarfed the small middle-aged man behind it. He was hunched over the reports studiously – for her benefit no doubt – his belly bulging hard against his too tight suit as he twirled his thin mustache and tapped his pencil against the papers thoughtfully. In truth, he was doing nothing at all productive, simply making Marija wait what he felt was an appropriate period of time before acknowledging her presence, a trick MJ knew only too well.

"Sit down, Ms Draekins," he said without looking up. It was a order, not an act of hospitality, designed to get her down to a physical level where he could – at a moment of his choosing – rise to loom over her threateningly with all sixty five inches of his squat Italian-Welsh body. After six years of working for the man she was wise to all his tricks. Despite her quaking knees she remained standing.

"What's up, Mr. Wellesby?" She asked, trying to keep both the fear and the belligerence out of her voice.

Now he looked up, giving her a ferocious scowl.

"Ms Draekins! I asked you to be seated; I suggest you comply!"

Anger shook his pudgy jowls, bulged his already protuberant eyes. He looked like an ineffectual, wrong side of the tracks Hitler with a thyroid problem. MJ wanted to laugh, wanted to continue to defy him. But she needed the damn job. Since he was obviously looking for any excuse to jump on her, she finally grudgingly sat – sullen, silent, waiting for him to get on with his prepared line of crap.

"Our summer line of new floral overalls," he said, once he realized she was just going to sit there glaring at him through narrowed eyes with that stubborn, sulky pout on her face that he just wanted to slap right off her. "Our summer _designer_ line, Ms Draekins," he repeated ominously; "is not selling as well as we'd projected. And do you know why?"

_Yeah, because they suck_ , Marija thought, compressing her lips. Aloud she said nothing, waiting to see where this was going and ninety-nine percent sure it would be pure BS.

"Because they were _late_ getting to our distributors, Ms Draekins, that's why," he went on, beginning to huff, working his way up to believing himself. "They got there _too late_ to compete, and that's why they aren't selling. And do you know why they were late getting out, Ms Draekins? Do you?"

MJ grimaced, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling.

"Don't give me that look! Don't you give _me_ that look!" Wellesby shrieked, jumping out of his chair and banging a pudgy fist on the desk so hard his pens jumped in their holder. His face was beet red and his trembling lips were making the wispy little mustache twitch. "You know you dragged your heels on this project from the very start, and continued to drag them all the way through production. _That's_ why the damn things were late and _that's_ why they haven't sold!"

"Wellesby," Marija answered in a dangerously calm voice; "that's a pile of crap and you know it."

The little man sputtered in shock and outrage, waving his soft, professionally manicured hand frantically in the air. But MJ had held this back too long. Not about to be stopped now, her voice grew stronger, releasing months of pent-up indignation and resentment at the mini-tyrant.

"First of all, the order was less than two weeks overdue, well within our four-week margin _Mister_ Wellesby. So "late" was not the problem. As a matter of fact, even if they had been late, if the design had been worth a shit our regular customers would have bought them up anyway. But frankly sir, your precious creation stank."

"Ms Draekins, you'd better watch your mouth!" Wellesby interjected shrilly.

"Oh really? Well in case you've forgotten, I've still got your order to me _in writing_ from the first of March, compelling me to schedule production of this new designer line of yours without a proper preliminary survey – _contrary_ to company policy. Sorry, Mr. W, but if you're trying to shift the blame to me, using this fiasco of your own making as an excuse to get me fired you'd better think again. Because if you push it, it's gonna be your ass on the line, not mine!"

Marija had risen to her feet in fury, pointing her finger at the supervisor for emphasis, but something now made her pause, fading her anger-contorted features into a softer look of puzzlement. Her hand dropped to her side. Something had subtly changed in the atmosphere of the office. The air had thickened to almost cloying, and felt charged with electric energy not unlike when a summer thunderstorm approaches. Her last words seemed to be echoing faintly in the after-silence: _not mine, not mine, not mine._

"Oh shit," the small being in the pit of her stomach cried out, running to hide behind the base of her spine. Innately she knew what was coming, but also knew there was not a thing she could do to prevent it.

The aura in the room said that reality had - once again - been displaced. MJ sensed the onset of that now too familiar sound-swallowing silence - not just the absence of sound but the suppression of it under an even louder quiet - filling her ears with its contrived nothingness in the same way it filled the vast reaches of the endless universe with its song of emptiness.

Her heart roared wildly in her chest, unheard.

"Mr. Wellesby?" she queried hesitantly, for the man - rather than flailing about in a paroxysm of ineffectual anger as he would normally - had instead calmly reseated himself behind his desk, and was now looking up at her with an eerie mocking smile which bent the corners of his lips but left his eyes strangely cold, brittle and dead.

He didn't answer, yet for an instant his features seemed to melt and ripple, as if a wave had passed through them. MJ blinked rapidly to clear the haze from her vision, but then it happened again.

"No," she squeaked, shaking her head and pressing her fingers against her eyes, willing the visual deformity gone. When she looked up a minute later the little man looked normal. "Thank God," she whispered: " _I've got to get a grip,"_ she thought.

Then the wavering motion passed through Wellesby again, and this time it didn't fade but continued to grow more vivid and complex. The man's face was changing, melting and remolding before her eyes. First it turned into a caricature of itself: the receding chin receding further and further until it disappeared altogether; the wide thin-lipped mouth stretching and exaggerating into a grotesquery; the bulbous eyes enlarging until they seemed about to pop from his head.

MJ gasped, trying first to say something, then to turn her head away from the vision: She found she could do neither. Her hand shot up to her mouth, knuckles pushed hard into her teeth, frozen in horror.

The squat little man's nose grew shorter and shorter, flattening into nothing but two slightly ridged nasal apertures, while his pasty complexion took on a decidedly greenish hue, gradually deepening into the color of Spanish moss, and his portly body grew ever more rounded and hunched.

" _Mr. Toad_ , huh?" he croaked, his voice a hoarse rasp from deep inside the bulging throat. "That what you call me, you and that large-assed, tight-cunted spinster you work with: You thought I didn't _know_?"

"Oh oh Mr. Wellesby," MJ stammered; "your face..." She reached a tentative hand out toward him, but her terrified overture of concern was cut short.

" _Oh oh_ shut up you ignorant slut," the voice wheezed derisively, now seeming to originate not from Wellesby at all but from somewhere behind the oversized frog face which gaped ludicrously out of the three piece Brook's Brothers suit. "Don't you know yet who this is? Here, let me give you a little hint."

A roar of horrible laughter filled the spaces between the silence, coursing up her spine like a shock wave. The shape before the woman rapidly reformed itself again: The bulging eyes closed and then reopened slowly to expose two fiery red, almond shaped orbs with vertical black slits for pupils. The fat round head elongated and narrowed into a lizard like aspect, its lipless reptilian mouth gaping open to expose two gleaming white rows of sharp carnivorous teeth protruding from the shiny black gums. From deep in its throat a narrow black ribbon of tongue uncoiled and flicked out an alarming length, nearly touching Marija's face where she stood as if paralyzed - held there either by her own terror or by some outside force.

The demon's eyes locked onto hers, fierce and unrelenting in their power. As she was forced to look back into them she felt herself being drawn slowly into their depths, pulled under the control of the entity behind them as a swimmer is pulled under by a deadly riptide.

The scaly greenish black skin of the monster's face loomed closer, leaning across the desk, the crimson windows to its dark soul widening as if to envelop her. The woman felt torn between fear and fascination, attraction and repulsion. She wanted to pull her attention away, to run, to hide her face from this hideous creature; but at the same time she found herself mysteriously drawn to it with the magnetism of perverse longing.

It was during this brief period of vacillation that she first became aware of a small blemish within one of the hypnotic red eyes, a black spot near the pupil that appeared to be moving. She felt a sudden overpowering curiosity, one that overcame even her own terror, to know what it was. As MJ leaned forward to peer at it little more closely, then moved closer still trying to bring the object into focus, she was unwittingly leaving her resistance to the beast behind.

And as the reality of the dragon grew ever more prominent in the room, the reality of her surroundings faded away, quietly obliterated by the presence of the beast: Just as had happened in her dream.

The intertwined, four dimensional fabric of time and space was being warped and flattened into a two-dimensional curtain; when it dissipated entirely into a one dimensional nothingness, Marija knew intuitively that she would be beyond recall, dissipated along with it. Nevertheless she felt compelled to continue probing the mystery of that small spot in the devil's eye - just a second more, she almost had it now - vaguely rationalizing that the answer to what it was might provide a clue to his vulnerability and to her own ultimate escape.

So thinking, the spot grew suddenly larger, clearly discernible now as two tiny dark silhouettes against the blood red iris, like figurines carved from obsidian, then thrown back into the fire of their origin, writhing and moving in almost dancelike postures inside the brightly burning eye.

She gaped in amazement, leaning forward. The tiny figures were now clearly defined: One was a naked woman, the other some sort of winged beast. They seemed to be linked together somehow, the woman alternately attempting to tear herself away and then flinging herself with destructive abandon back into its grip.

Suddenly Marija felt as if she had entered the eye of the dragon itself: The figures were now as large as characters on a movie screen, larger than life, and she saw with horror that the woman was engaged in sexual intercourse with the dragon-like animal, a violent, grunting, painful act of lust and hatred.

Then, as the woman's face turned slowly toward her, grinning in empty-eyed, slavish eroticism, Marija realized that the face was her own.

She screamed, just once, driving her fists hard into her offending eyes, hurling herself backwards from the awful truth, while deep in a cowering corner of her mind a tiny maniacal part of her personality burst into hysterical side-splitting glee at the joke.

Slowly, carefully she forced herself to take a breath, then another; then to breathe deeply, hold it, let it out, do it again, using every bit of will she owned to take control of her mind, to beat the quivering hysteria back into submission. Finally she opened her eyes, hoping the terrible vision was gone, that the regular world had reasserted itself, that this had been merely another hallucination, by product of her seemingly deranged mind, which she had managed by force of will to vanquish.

Yet as her vision cleared from the electrical stars pressed into her eyeballs by her own fists, she saw the winged beast standing directly in front of her now, the redness of his eyes all around them both; and from the recesses of his lower belly there protruded an enormous, sweating, spiral-tipped organ. It was fully engorged, held in the grasp of a scaly green clawed hand and pulsing at her hungrily as it flipped up and down. She felt the hysterical laughter begin to rise in her throat again, but when it reached her mouth it turned into a sour-tasting bile that erupted as a fount of vomit.

The beast grinned, lapping his black serpent's tongue suggestively out at her. The tongue ensnared the hem of her skirt on its tip, lifting the soft fabric high above her waist to expose the scantily clad pubic area peeking out from behind her lace bikini panties and sheer panty hose.

Now the dragon rolled his hips in suggestive parody, slowly, lasciviously; then abruptly thrust his pelvis forward so that the huge oily penis prodded her genital area. As the pointed tip touched her there, she felt and intense fiery cold penetrate her, coursing through her vagina in an aching shudder.

Something in her snapped. Screams erupted from deep inside her soul, tearing their way out through her throat in painful, shattering explosions, one after the other. She backed and whirled, blindly shoving her way past some soft, inconsequential forms that had materialized behind her in the room, grabbing at the more solid outlines of the door frame as she propelled herself into the outer office like a metal projectile in a pinball machine, bouncing and careening off the haphazard array of desks as she ran.

The echoes of her continuous wailing - punctuated by shrill shrieks every time she hit, bounced and caromed - ended abruptly as she reached the main entrance of Brotherton's Sportswear. Throwing the outer door open, she stopped short, dazzled by the glare of the noonday sun, then began running again in a crazy stumbling gait across the parking lot. Some inner sense of propriety stilled her awful cries the second she reached the outside world, but though no sound now escaped her lips - except for a muffled, whimpering noise - the gut-tearing sounds carried on unabated inside her until she became little more than one tremendous unreleased howl of primal pain running through the dark of the day.

****

When Marija had begun screaming, Shelly was the first to leap from her desk and burst unannounced through the heavy oak doors into Wellesby's office, with Carol and Pat, the clerk typists, close on her heels. But when she'd reached out for the hysterical woman she was met with a smashing blow to the chest as MJ blindly fought past, a blow that hurled the older woman against the door with such force that her head snapped back against the hard wood frame, leaving her with a nasty lump at the back of her skull and an instant throbbing headache.

"What the hell did you do to her, Wellesby?" she demanded angrily through her dizziness and pain, making him the target for her own injury as well.

The office manager's usual pretentiousness had dissolved, and he was sweating profusely, shaking in nervous agitation.

"Nothing, I don't know...I did nothing! Now get out, get out and leave me alone," he cried, shoving the women through the door and slamming it behind them. He sat back down behind his massive desk, holding his head in his damp little hands and trying to figure out what had happened.

He remembered chewing out the sassy bitch for delaying production of his summer designer line, remembered her angry retort couched in gutter language, threatening him with some memo crap, and how furious he'd in turn become with her. But after that his memory blurred around the edges, got mushy in the middle. He recalled feeling a sudden dizziness, so that he'd had to sit back down because of it. He remembered thinking he might be having a stroke - "Jesus, not at my age!"- but then blankness took over, like a section of film had been edited out of his life story. Next thing he knew the screwy broad was screaming like a stuck pig and running through his office like her ass was on fire.

The distraught man shook his head, rubbed his graying temples, shook his head again. "Hell, I don't know what happened, she's just crazy, that's all." He stood up, ran a hand through his limp hair, greasy with sweat, and sat back down. Even _he_ was unconvinced by that simplistic a conclusion.

Replaying the scene in his head, once more he saw her angry outburst, felt his growing fury, then the dizziness followed by the blankness - a feeling less that he had blacked out than that he was missing something, like a small segment of time had been permanently removed from his life, something for which he would never have any memory, because he simply wasn't there. And as much as he dwelt on that blank period, dug at it, picked about in his mind for any stray pieces of it lying about unattended, he could find nothing, not even one piece of evidence to account for what transpired next.

At last he was forced to conclude that he hadn't lost consciousness at all, that he couldn't have, not for more than a second or two tops. Which meant that whatever screaming and carrying on Marija had done at that point were strictly the result of her own hysterical temperament, some kind of psychotic break: _Had_ to be. They certainly weren't his fault.

"I've done nothing wrong," he assured himself, tugging his tie into a more comfortable fit, jutting out his little chin. He took a deep breath, feeling he was getting a handle on things again, dismissing all the imponderables once and for all and setting his mind back on the course of narrow realities he could accept and deal with. "The bitch has to go," he concluded with a nod.

Enough was enough: As a responsible executive he had no choice but to recommend her immediate termination. He exhaled forcefully - not aware until he did so that he'd been holding his breath - and tried to paste on an appropriate look of regret. He took a clean white handkerchief from his vest pocket, carefully mopped his brow, fastidiously removed all traces of dirt from his fingertips, and folded the cloth back into a perfect square before replacing it.

"Perhaps," he mused aloud, intertwining his fingers and cracking his knuckles, "an extended sick leave - without pay of course - would be considered more acceptable, more _humane_ , under the circumstances. Yes," he smiled, picking up the interoffice phone line and punching in the four digit code for Whitney Brotherton's private number; "an extended sick leave ought to be just the ticket."

At the same moment Fred Wellesby was putting the ax to Marija, Joe was on the other line, vainly trying to get hold of his fiance."

"Ah _am_ sorry suh, but, as I already said, she's not in at the moment," drawled the hopelessly uncommunicative receptionist, a wad of gum slurring her words.

Joe sighed. "I understand what you are saying," he told the woman patiently; "but all I'm asking you now is if she said where she was going or when she'd be back?"

"I don't know!" the receptionist replied. Now Joe caught the hint of a quaver in her tone, an underlying tension, something not said that sent a small gnawing rat of worry to work in his stomach.

"Listen, this is her fiancé, Joe. Is something wrong? We were supposed to have lunch together, so I know she wouldn't just leave without telling me."

"I, I don't know. I don't know what I'm suppose to say." She replied, her composure breaking down into a tearful whine." I have no futhah comment."

"You have no further comment?! Are you fucking kidding! What the hell is going on down there!" Joe hollered, losing all patience.

The growing alarm Joe had been feeling suddenly exploded into a full blown, white hot terror. He saw in his mind Marija's face as it had been four days ago, wild-eyed and ashen beneath the globs of oatmeal cookie down that ran down her head from the overturned orange mixing bowl she wore like a helmet \- a picture that would have been ridiculously funny were it not for the fact that she was wielding a cast iron skillet over her head, swinging it wildly in all directions and screaming about armies of bugs attacking her, bugs that were not there. And about doors and windows that wouldn't open, about ghosts and demons that called her by name, about a stench of sewage that filled the apartment and sickened her, when all he could hear was her own screams, all he could smell was the acrid smoke from the batch of cookies burning black in the oven.

Now maybe it had happened again, whatever it was. Had it?

"Tell me what's going on," he insisted.

"I, I can't...You wanna talk to Mr. Wellesby?"

"No, I want..."

"Please hold suh," the receptionist retreated behind her Georgia drawl; "Ah'll put you through to Mr. Wellesby as soon as his line is free."

The connection clicked dead, cutting off all further protest. In a second the Muzak switched on, its music to drum fingers by becoming increasing annoying as he waited for the manager to pick up. Too many minutes went by, too much time; time to get scared, time to get angry. Damn it Marija, _why_? Why did this have to happen to you - whatever the fuck it is! - to _us_...to **me**. Why couldn't you just be a nice normal sexy girl like you were when I first met you.

He thought back on their early relationship: Sure, they'd had their little metaphysical discussions over a glass of chablis or two - how many people in love didn't? It went with the territory. - but these were of safe things, airy things, entertaining things: the essential spiritual nature of man, the possibility of reincarnation, soul mates, karma, ghosts...things you could discuss all day and night without ever proving or disproving a thing.

It got a lot less entertaining when her dreams began, dreams which had increasingly taken a bigger, greedier bite out of their shared reality. They were _her_ dreams, her visions (or hallucinations), but over the past ten days they'd been dragging him unwillingly into them along with her, down into the blackness of some other reality until he'd almost begun to believe, to see things too.

Soul mates, yeah; soul mates in lunacy.

"I'm getting tired of your jokes," he said suddenly to whoever was in charge, although someone walking by would have thought he was saying this to the party on the other line. He clicked off his cell phone and shoved it back into his pocket, grabbed his keys from the desk and bolted for the door.

Fifteen minutes later he ripped into the Brotherton's parking lot in fourth gear, quickly downshifting to a screeching halt in one of the visitor spaces near the entrance. As he got out of his car, he glanced across the rows of vehicles in the staff parking lot and almost immediately spotted MJ's old Toyota parked in its usual space. A great draining sense of relief washed over him - she was here after all, or back - followed by a wave of unwarranted anger at her for scaring the piss out of him over nothing. He almost got back into his Alfa and drove away, then reason and doubt overcame the impulse. _Something_ must have happened to cause the receptionist to act the way she had, even if it wasn't as serious as he'd imagined.

The plump, attractively over-decorated woman manning the front desk glanced up as he stormed in, sucking in her tummy.

"May Ah he'p y'all?" she inquired huskily Southern drawl at its finest.

"I want to see Marija: I'm Joe, her fiancé," he said, his voice flat and hard.

"Oh! Well, she's not here, like I told you before," the woman sniffed, turning away.

"Just what kind of game are you playing with me?" he said, slamming his palm against the desk. He grabbed her manicured hand in his to get her attention, squeezing it harder than perhaps he intended.

"Ow, leggo, that hurts!" she whined, trying to pull her hand away.

"I call on the phone and you tell me she's gone," he raged. "You refuse to tell me where or when, and let on like something bad has happened; then you put me on hold for a half a fucking hour..."

"It was only ten m-minutes," she protested weakly.

"So I leave my own goddam job and drive over here and what do I see? What do I see?" His jaw was clenched and spitting out the words like machine gun fire. "MJ's car is right there in the parking lot. But you're still trying to tell me she's not here? I'm her god damn _fiancé_ , I have a right to know, so what are you trying to pull?!" In his increasing fury his grip tightened on her hand until she was squirming and whimpering in pain.

"Please," she cried, tears beginning to form in big pools within her heavily mascaraed lashes; "please leggo my hand. It really hurts."

Joe released her, shocked by the realization of what he was doing. He was about to apologize when the girl spoke up.

"She really isn't here, mister," the blonde said tearfully, rubbing at her hand. "She went kind of crazy-like. I don't know what happened, honestly I don't. I don't even _want_ to know. Wouldja please just go talk to Mr. Wellesby?"

But Joe was already past her, hurrying towards the production chief's office, a sick fear churning through his stomach. His mind stuck like a needle in a cracked groove, replaying the receptionist's words over and over: " _She went kind of crazy-like....She went kind of crazy-like...She went kind of crazy-like."_

Ten minutes later he emerged from Wellesby's private office much subdued. As he passed through the clerical area a hand reached out and softly plucked at his shirt sleeve.

"Joe?" a voice whispered through his black fear. He turned, scowling, to face a middle aged woman who looked nearly as bad as he felt.

"I'm Shelly, MJ's friend," she introduced herself. Her voice was a soft throaty whisper that might have sounded seductive had her face not been so grave. "Can I talk to you a minute, outside?"

He nodded. MJ had spoken of this woman from time to time, always very warmly. As he held open the heavy glass entrance door for her, he noticed the receptionist giving the two of them a furtive look before picking up her interoffice line.

"Your friend in there...." he warned with a flick of his eyes in that direction.

"Screw her," the secretary said tartly, openly glaring through the glass at the buxom blonde, who nervously returned the phone to its hook without dialing.

"Joe," she turned back to him with an intensely earnest expression on her lined face; "I don't know what Wellesby told you happened in there, but I feel sure that it had to be a complete lie if you walked out of there without punching him. I've never seen anyone so completely terrified as MJ when she came tearing out of that office, and I'm telling you" - the words spewed out, building momentum from the woman's inner turmoil - "that is simply not like Marija. I've known her for over six years now, working side by side, eight hours a day, five days a week, and she's never flown off the handle once. Oh sure, she gets mad sometimes - don't we all? - but never anything like this. Never. My advice is get a lawyer, press charges. That asshole had to do something, something really terrible, to make her react that way!"

"Yeah, maybe you're right," Joe said, putting a hand on Shelly's bony shoulder to comfort, while keeping his private doubts private. She hadn't seen MJ with a mixing bowl on her head. Aloud he said; "First thing I've got to do is find her, make sure she's okay and hear her side of the story. Have you any idea where she went, and why she didn't take the car?"

"She went out in such a rush she left her purse on her desk; the keys are probably still inside it. I saw her fumbling at her car door and ran inside to fetch it for her, but when I got back she was gone."

"You don't know which way she headed do you?"

"No, but maybe one of the other girls noticed. Wait here while I get her purse for you and I'll see what I can find out."

Two minutes later Shelly was back with the purse and the information that MJ was last seen running north on Potrero heading in the direction of Franklin Square.

"Um, could you..."she faltered, her voice cracking as she pressed a torn slip of paper into Joe's hand; "could you keep me posted? I'm, I'm very fond of her you know?" She wiped a stray tear from the corner of her eye.

****

After a few blocks Marija's headlong flight had slowed to a stumbling shuffle, her body bent with the pain of her ragged breathing, her hand pressed to her side to ease a muscle spasm there. The terror that had spurred her was easing somewhat, but reality failed to return in its place. Instead she felt bewildered, disoriented, not knowing where she was or what she was doing there, nor even who she was; knowing only that she had to keep going, to escape, to find a safe haven somewhere.

When she reached the intersection of Seventeenth and Potrero she turned left, following her instincts unerringly toward a home she couldn't remember in a neighborhood still nearly three miles away.

As she walked slowly west along Seventeenth, the industrial complexes of the Potrero gave way to the Hispanic barrios of the Mission District. Small mom-and-pop markets, dusty pawnshops, dark-fronted bars, secondhand clothing stores, slumlord realties, dirty graffiti-scarred laundromats, dollar stores and small appliance repair shops - the culturally deficient enterprises that bespoke a poverty-ridden clientele - lined either side of the broad thoroughfare, their windows protected by wrought-iron bars against the own local compadres.

Fragrant, peppery odors floated out from numerous Mexican and El Salvadoran eateries along the route, making Marija aware of the gnawing emptiness in her stomach. But her mind was incapable of making the necessary connection between the aromas and her hunger, the medium of exchange needed to bring them together. All she could do was reluctantly move on.

Ahead a group of cholos - teenage Mexican street toughs - were leaning their lanky, perfumed forms against the corner of an old brick building, careful not to get their hip-length, starched white t-shirts dirty. She saw one of the youths - a tall mustachioed chicano with greased-back hair held in place by a ladies' hairnet and swarthy, acne-pocked skin - jab an elbow into the ribs of one of his buddies. Next thing she knew, her way was blocked by a semi-circle of five leering adolescents.

Their mouths were moving but the words made no sense. MJ didn't even recognize it as language, more like the buzzing of insects. She stared dumbly from one to the other, wanting only to get by, wondering why they were preventing her from doing so.

"Hey mama, whassa matter, you lost?"

"Que pasa huera?"

"You slummin' today chica, or wha'?"

"Lookin' good for an old lady."

The pack was closing in on her as she turned around, looking for an escape route.

"I'd do her. Hey, you want some hot latin love baby doll?"

"Chupala mi vergas, puta!" the hair net boy sneered, causing the others to laugh in a way that frightened her now. A brown arm shot out, lean fingers grabbing her nipple through the thin fabric of her blouse and giving it a vicious tweak.

As the five pressed in against her, taunting and grabbing and rubbing against her body, their sultry brown eyes blinked languorously closed beneath the long thick black lashes. When they re-opened each was a glowing red.

A silent shriek coursed down her spine, the energy making her teeth clamp down onto her lower lip, drawing a bright speck of blood. She looked helplessly from one to the other. Before her wide staring eyes the cholos' tanned skins were growing darker, their leering smiles widening into lipless, gaping mouths filled with sharply pointed teeth. Then, from the recesses of those open pits elongated slender black tongues snaked out at the horrified woman, touching her cheeks, her neck and lips with their cold slimy wetness.

Marija's keening wail erupted like an air raid siren, shattering the afternoon stillness. The teenagers backed off quickly in shifty-eyed surprise and poorly disguised fear, instantly returned to human form. They began muttering defenses, their disdain for "crazy white bitches" coming into their hood and "makeen trabull."

Then they rapidly dispersed down the boulevard before anyone could finger them for whatever."

As soon as they took off Marija turned in the opposite direction, her terror back full blown, and began running blindly around the next corner and up the quiet street beyond. Halfway up the next block, attracted by the sound of her pounding feet on the sunlit, cracked concrete, an old yellow cur came charging out from a side yard, hackles raised and barking wildly.

She paused a second to catch her breath, glancing at the dog as she gasped for air: immediately the animal's face began to change into a semblance of the same demonic effigy, crimson eyes laughing with evil humor, barks becoming a nasty, mocking cachinnation.

"Oh nooo, oh come on, please, not again," she whimpered, taking a step backward from the horrific sight. As she did so her heel slipped off the edge of the curb and, losing her balance, arms pin-wheeling wildly, she tumbled ass-first into the filth of the gutter, whiplashing her head in a solid crack against the asphalt. Streaks of light shot through her closed eyes, her ears rang with the blow. Dazed, she rose slowly to her elbows, looking about cautiously. The dog had by now retreated, scurrying out of sight before the hobbling rush of an elderly couple who'd witnessed the accident - to their eyes nothing more than a woman frightened by an ordinary mongrel.

As they hurried to her aid Marija looked up with a weak smile of gratitude, struggling to rise. But the wrinkled, age-spotted hands that grabbed her arms to assist had now turned into scaly green claws. And rather than lifting her to safety they carelessly flung her backwards, nearly into the oncoming traffic.

"Oh my God!" she cried out, feverishly scrabbling away from them, her eyes wild with panic. "Get away, get away from me, leave me alone!"

The old man hesitated, uncertain how far Christian duty required him to go. His wife had already retreated to her little aluminum cart of groceries, clucking and shaking her head. _He_ saw a young woman groveling in the gutter, her features contorted with some indecipherable anguish, her hair and clothing a filthy mess. He shook his head and retreated to his wife, leading her away, his expression a mixture of sadness and contempt for the drug-crazed creature they'd tried to help.

Awhile after they'd departed, MJ clambered slowly to her feet, dusting herself off with exaggerated care. Her skirt was torn and soiled, her panty hose shredded, her elbows skinned. The heel on one shoe had broken off, giving her an awkward limp as she hobbled up the quiet residential street.

The midday sun burned down in a shadowless glare, but its warmth didn't touch Marija. She walked in her own shadow - cold, alone, a displaced person dumped harshly into a nightmarish foreign land full of secret enemies. Head held low, her shoulders hunched about her neck and her eyes followed only the shuffling limp of her feet. What few other pedestrians she encountered gave her a wide berth, staring after her and mumbling deprecating comments to one another as she passed.

A few blocks farther on she noticed a small, beautiful blond-haired child playing in his front yard. As she approached he ran up to the white picket fence and called out to her in a sweet innocent voice.

"Lady! Hey lady,look at thith," he lisped.

She turned her head slowly, numbly, somehow knowing. Resignedly, she looked anyway. The four year old had unzipped his little blue jeans and was dangling a horribly oversized, sewage green penis from between the slats in the fence, waving it at her with his chubby pink fist. Now that he had her attention, he began urinating on her feet, giggling wickedly, his red eyes glowing with a malignant and knowing humor.

Marija gasped, doubling over as if she'd been hit in the stomach. Tears welled up and streamed down her face while she looked stupidly at her wet feet. She kicked off the sodden, ruined sandals, working loose the heel strap of one with the sole of the other, her head bent in total degradation. When she finally looked up again the boy had disappeared.

Muffling her sobs by biting the knuckles of her clenched fist until the salty-sweet taste of her own blood made her gag, she blindly stumbled on. Forty feet above her head the afternoon traffic roared along the central skyway, the drivers part of an indifferent world of speed and power in their own time and space, no longer men of flesh and blood but mere extensions of the steel and chrome machines they controlled.

A red Alfa Romeo flashed by on the arcing ribbon of concrete overhead, but it was in the fast lane, traveling north as she was, so Marija never saw it. Nor did the frowning, intense looking man behind the wheel spot the small, desolate figure on the street below, though it was she he was searching for, her home he was now headed to in hopes she might be there.

Disoriented, she moved through the sights and sounds of the city like a sleepwalker, a derelict in a drunken stupor, little of what she saw getting through, none of it making any sense. But as she passed the corner of Mission and Duboce Streets, Marija's attention was suddenly drawn toward the display window of a small dusty bookstore. She stopped in front of it, though she had no particular desire to. Her feet simply refused to move. The skin along her spine began to crawl.

With what little scrap of will she had left, she tried to resist the powerful urge to turn her head towards that window, knowing deep inside that she must not, _must not._ Yet slowly, inexorably, as if under the control of an unseen hand, her head began to move, twisting about the top of her spine until she was face to face with the reflective surface of the glass. Then her whole body turned toward it. Within she saw her own disarrayed image staring back.

As she watched, mesmerized, she saw her own face lengthen and broaden, morphing into the dreaded reptilian shape, saw her own sultry almond-shaped eyes become the color of blood, her sensuous full lipped mouth reform into a wide lipless grimace full of long dagger-like teeth from behind which slithered a slender, lolling black tongue.

Shaking her head back and forth wildly in a last desperate denial, MJ opened that hideous mouth, feeling the scream boiling and churning inside her, seeking escape. But instead of sound pouring out in an ear-splitting release of her soul's agony, she saw instead a vile vomit burst forth, a blackish bile full of filthy, crawly things; toads and salamanders, huge brown spiders and pink worms, crusty wriggly-legged beetles and formless, colorless, slithering things. An unbelievable volume of these obscenities upgorged from the beast that was Marija, more than any human form could possibly contain, spewing out of her mouth as if she'd become an open geyser connected to the bowels of hell.

A crowd had begun to gather at a safe distance from the woman, seeing merely a disreputable looking female gone mad, screaming continuously at the plate glass window of an old bookstore.

" _What is happening to me, what is happening to me,"_ her inner voice cried as the outer voiced screamed aloud. " _What has happened to me, what am I becoming, what have I become?"_

The wailing siren of a police car grew louder, abruptly cutting off as the black and white coasted to a halt in front of the crowd. But even as the uniformed officers leapt from their unit with businesslike urgency, guns drawn, a gasp went up from the crowd followed a second later by the loud crack of shattering glass.

Marija, in a final desperate act of self destruction - or survival - had thrown herself headfirst through the store window.

****

The ER doctor had the bedside manner of a used car salesman.

"Yes, yes, she'll be fine, doing just fine," he bellowed in a hale good fellow voice that turned heads in the waiting room.

Joe cringed. He'd quietly asked how Marija was, all but whispered it. You'd think the doc would take the hint and do the same.

"No real danger from the physical injuries at least," he boomed on. "But I think we should keep her a couple of days for a psych eval: Do you know her insurance carrier by any chance?"

"I have no idea," Joe responded coolly. "Uh, do you think we could we talk somewhere a little more private?"

"No idea about the insurance, huh?" The medic said, scribbling something on his notepad. "Well, no worries, we've notified the victim's mother and she's on her way. She'll probably know."

"So what about her condition," Joe asked as he trailed along behind the doctor, who was obviously anxious to get back to his rounds.

"Well, like I said, her injuries are no problem: a few superficial lacerations to the hands and forearms, and one that required a few stitches on her forehead, but not to worry, it's way up here." He indicated a point just below the hairline. "The scar won't even show."

"I wasn't worried about that; I meant her mental state, that condition," Joe said in a lowered voice."

"Oh, well, yeah, that's a little more troubling. Tell me, do you know if she's ever suffered any prior mental breakdowns or disorders?" the doctor asked, his voice if anything even louder than before.

Joe shook his head, not willing to share with this loud insensitive jerk any more details than necessary. His fists had begun to curl and uncurl in his pockets.

"On anything?" the resident inquired: Behind the attempted air of professionalism Joe detected a knowing smirk.

"I beg your pardon."

"You know, has she been taking any drugs, prescription or otherwise?"

Noting Joe cast a worried glance around the crowded waiting room to see who might have overheard, the doctor laid a reassuring hand on Joe's shoulder: "Not to worry, this is strictly confidential."

"Not anymore," Joe snapped. "Maybe you want to get on the loudspeaker for this?"

"Sorry, I just have to ask," the other responded huffily, his voice a tad lower now.

"No, she's not _on anything_ doctor. She's a vegan, into natural foods, and totally against drugs of any sort, prescription or otherwise."

"Okay, okay," the resident gave in, hands in the air, making it obvious he didn't believe the denial for one second. "We have to cover all bases; it's in the best interests of the patient, you understand. So, no drugs, and no prior history of mental illness you say?"

Joe hesitated. "No," he answered at last, but the lack of conviction was evident in his tone and the doctor picked up on it at once.

"Something you're not saying," he inquired, his voice finally mercifully low.

Joe looked around. Though the emergency room was filled with people too deep in their own miseries to pay much attention to anyone else's, he still felt as if a hundred ears had just perked up to listen in.

"She's been...under a bit of a strain lately," he faltered: "Been seeing a priest about it."

"His name?" The doctor drew his pen from the clipboard.

"Muldoon, Father Michael Muldoon. Listen, when can I see her?"

"We've got her under sedation right now. Would you happen to have this priest's address or phone number?"

Joe fished a business card out of his wallet. "What kind of sedation?" he asked nervously as he handed over the card.

"Oh, just a little something to help her sleep. Seconal I believe," the physician replied as he jotted down the information from the priest's card.

"Seconal! Isn't that a barbiturate?"

"Not to worry," the doctor said again.

Joe thought if he heard that expression one more time the man would have something to worry about all right.

"We use it all the time in cases like this. It's perfectly safe."

"Yeah, well..." Joe ran his hand through his hair, thinking of the _Nightmare on Elm Street_ movies. Drugged sleep might make her more vulnerable to whatever it was that seemed to be taking over her mind. "Could I stay here with her tonight anyway? I'd like to be there if she wakes up."

"Sorry, but we can't allow visitors here beyond regular hours, particularly in the psych wing...regulations you know."

He put his arm around the worried man's shoulders in a fatherly fashion, though he was probably little older than Joe, and began steering him toward the elevators. "If you like, you can sit with her now for a while, although I'm sure she'll be sleeping. She's on the third floor, just ask at the desk for her room number." He glanced at his watch. "You've got about forty-five minutes until visiting hours are over."

Joe was sitting by the bedside, holding one of Marija's bandaged hands while she slept, when Mike Muldoon burst into the room about thirty minutes later.

The tall slender, mocha skinned priest would have been handsome by any standards, but somehow the priest vestments he wore made him even more attractive. Joe always felt a pang of jealous insecurity around him, despite self-admonitions to the contrary. Mike was a good guy through and through, he knew.

"What happened, how is she!" the priest whispered anxiously.

"I don't know what happened exactly," Joe replied as he rose to shake the father's hand. "She apparently freaked out at work today, though no one there seems to know why, just that she ran screaming from the factory in hysterics after a meeting with her boss." He began pacing back and forth by the foot of MJ's bed, his voice low and rushed as he related what little he knew of the incident. When he was done he sighed deeply, shoving his fists into his pockets and looking up at the priest as if from a vast distance, his eyes alone not too proud to beg for help.

"Have you talked to Marija about what happened," Mike asked, subdued.

"Joe shook his head. By the time I got here they'd knocked her out so they could sew up the lacerations. I guess she was still... _agitated_ ," he grimaced. "Doc says they gave her seconal, says she'll be out all night."

"Seconal! Damn it Joe, don't you realize what that could do to her, how helpless the drug will make her to resist if...if this was caused by..."

He remembered the way he'd met Marija, just a little over five days ago. He was awakened by pounding on the rectory door in the middle of the night, then voices: the old world brass of his aging housekeeper Mrs. McGilvroy shooing the intruder off, the soft breathless terror in the voice outside the entry, terror that had compelled him to leave the comfort of his bed and come to her aid. He remembered the wide hazel eyes, huge with fright in the dimly lit parlor, peeking over the rim of a steaming cup of tea while the frightened girl told her story.

She'd been fooling around with the technique of astral projection, from some old book she'd found, when in the midst of what seemed to be an out-of-body episode she'd suddenly found herself confronted by the shadowy form of a huge dragon-like monster which beckoned from behind the fading screen of reality. He called her by name and told her secret things, she'd claimed; and as he talked his eyes opened wider and wider, huge almond shaped eyes of glowing red that held her, caressed her, drew her slowly into them.

Almost too late she'd realized what was happening (although in the retelling, she said she could not quite remember what that was, only that it had frightened her so badly she'd begun to scream and fight her way back into her body, to consciousness.) When at last she'd finally managed to pop her eyes open, back in her bed and bathed in sweat, she swore she'd heard something in the corner of the empty room, something like the faint echo of distant thunder, or perhaps laughter.

Later, she'd told the priest, she'd tried to dismiss the whole experience as a very vivid nightmare. Until tonight, when those same almond shaped red eyes had blinked to life inside her TV....and the TV was off! Then the voice, the demon's voice had hissed at her from the dead speakers: "Marija! You can't escape me now. Come, get it over with."

She'd broken down at this point in her story, broken into racking sobs that were almost convulsions. Agony. It was this pain and fear that had sent her fleeing blindly through the night streets of San Francisco in her pajamas and overcoat, and into his life.

Mike felt now, as he had then, the slow sickness that seemed to creep around his stomach like a bellyful of wet slugs, hearing and not wanting to hear this. There was a cold slickness sheening his forehead, a shaking in his hands, wet palms. He'd gone through the motions of comforting, promising to help. Then he'd taken her confession, given her a blessing and driven her home. But when he'd returned to his rectory bed he'd just lain there, unable to sleep. At last he'd turned on the light, picked up his Bible from the nightstand, and then watched with trembling amazement while the pages riffled as if turned by an unseen hand, falling open to a place near the end of the good book. It was Revelations, Chapter 12.

Even now he could see the gilt and black lettering, as the words leapt from the page.

He'd read: "And there appeared another wonder in heaven, and behold a great red dragon...And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan...And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed..."

The beginning of Armageddon.

At that moment he's sensed a piece of a very old, but as yet concealed, puzzle click into place somewhere in the universe.

So much had happened in the five days since that first meeting! He looked over now at Joe, knowing that he too was remembering their hushed discussions, their various debated strategies, as the incidents had increased in frequency and intensity.

"I know she shouldn't be drugged, dammit! You think I don't realize that?" Joe responded hotly: "But what can I do? They already gave her the meds, and I have no authority to stop them! They won't even let me stay with her tonight, some goddam regulations - pardon my language, father - and if I told them why I think I should they'd probably medicate me too."

"Well maybe they'll let _me_ stay then," Muldoon suggested, and in answer to Joe's quizzical look he fingered the stiff clerical collar at his neck. "I'm a priest; they wouldn't throw a priest out, would they?"

"Huh."

"I'll go find the doctor and get his okay, then I'd better call the parish and let Mrs. M. know where I'll be, she's such a mother hen." He was already heading for the door. "You'll still be here when I get back?"

"Where else?" Joe waved wearily, sitting back down by the bed. He fought the rise of simmering resentment at the way Muldoon had once more taken charge of Marija's well-being, the fact that this priest had the right to stay with Joe's fiance when _he_ himself was not allowed.

Just then Marija's mother hurried into the room, wringing her hands melodramatically.

"Oh Joe, Joe, what are we to _do_?" she cried, bursting into tears as she flung herself into his arms.

He gave her shoulder a couple of awkward pats, muttering comforting monosyllables before extricating himself as politely as possible.

She peered over him at her daughter's bandaged arms and forehead, her unconscious form unnaturally still beneath the white sheets. "How _is_ she Joe, I mean _really_? I just couldn't _believe_ it when the hospital called me and said she was in the _psychiatric_ ward!" The woman's voice was beginning to undulate in pitch like the siren on a meat wagon. " _Nothing_ like this has _ever_ happened on _my_ side of the family, _never_!" She exclaimed, tears beginning to well up in her eyes again.

"Here, sit down Mrs. Draekins, please," Joe said, pulling out a chair.

"Dolores, call me Dolores," she sniffed, sitting down heavily. "Thank you, Joe."

Joe inhaled deeply, working on patience. MJ had explained her mother to him on more than one occasion, but apparently no one had ever explained Marija to her mother.

Mrs. Draekins - Dolores - remembered now all too well some of their discussions during Marija's youth, debates about all manner of nutty ideas, ranging from moral values to ESP to UFOs. She couldn't remember exactly when they'd stopped having those little talks, which had sometimes gotten a bit too heated and uncomfortable for her tastes, couldn't remember when MJ had finally given up trying to convince her of the existence - or even the possibility - of this or that or the other thing that no one in his right mind would even want to think about let alone believe in. But she did remember the relief she'd felt when she at last became aware that the talks had ceased and there were apparently no more such discussions on the agenda.

Over the years hence Dolores concluded that her daughter must have grown out of her weird ideas, leveled off in her thinking, become a rational adult. Now she saw that Marija had simply stopped _talking_ about such things to her, that's all. And this time she'd landed herself in the nut house for all the world to see.

That last had inadvertently been spoken out loud, she realized, as Joe took hold of her arm a little more firmly than she appreciated.

"Marija had an upsetting experience at work today, Mrs. Draekins, that's all. She's been under a lot of pressure there lately," he explained, looking directly into the woman's eyes. "She, ah, left the office and took a walk to cool off, and somehow along the way she lost her footing - she was crying, you understand - and stumbled into the display window of a small bookstore. It was simply an accident."

He reached over and took the older woman's hand in his, patting it reassuringly.

"Just a simple accident, an upset. I believe she may be on her period. But you know how these shrinks are: If you aren't happy every minute of your life they want to feed you some pills to make you that way, or evaluate your 'state of mind' and put some label on it, like that solves everything." He forced a small chuckle. "I suppose that's how they make the bucks it takes to live in Atherton, rather than the Mission District, right?"

"Oh, was that _all_ it was?" the matron sounded almost disappointed. "Well, do you think it's really necessary that I spend the night with her?" She'd already tucked her handkerchief back into her purse and edged forward in her chair as if to rise.

"No, not at all," Joe replied, helping her to her feet, as eager to have her out of there as she was to leave. "I don't think regulations permit overnight visitors in the hospital even if you wanted to stay, Dolores, but not to worry," he consciously mimicked the attending physician's pet phrase - I've arranged for a close personal friend who happens to be a priest to sit with her tonight."

"A priest! Oh my," she exclaimed, sensing some new drama.

"My close personal friend," Joe re-emphasized; "who happens to be a man of the cloth, thereby able to skirt hospital regulations."

"I see," said Dolores uncertainly. "Well then, I guess I might as well get along home."

"Yes, that's a good idea," Joe agreed, walking her to the door.

"You _will_ let her know I came by and expressed concern?"

"Of course, Mrs. Draekins, of course. I'll be in touch."

"Dolores," she admonished, leaving.

He quickly closed the door behind her, slumping to the chair in relief. A few minutes later, when the priest reappeared, Joe took his leave as well, too drained and depressed to make more than a perfunctory attempt at conversation before saying goodnight. After a double shot of Jack to numb the worry dogs, he flopped fully clothed onto his waterbed, listening to the mini-waves lap beneath his ears as they rocked him into the temporary respite of sleep.

Chapter 3

Saturday, June 10th

San Francisco

Joe sat bolt upright at the first jarring ring of the bedside phone, sensing even before fully conscious that the call must be about Marija. Disoriented, he glanced at the clock on the nightstand: the glowing red letters said 2:56. Darkness told him that was AM. He grabbed the phone in the middle of its second ring.

"Joe, this is Mike Muldoon. I'm still at the hospital. Can you get down here right away?"

Joe steeled himself for the news, stone-like against the pain and fear: "What's happened now," he asked.

"She's had another episode. The doctors think it was some kind of mild seizure, but it's _him_ , Joe, I'm sure of it. I managed to pull her out of it, talk her out, but now the attending wants to increase her meds and I don't have the authority to stop him. I have a plan, but it requires your help."

There was a note of desperation in the priest's usually well controlled voice that shocked Joe out of his apathy.

"I'll be there in 15 minutes," he said, and hung up.

When he arrived on the third floor ten minutes later, he strode past the nurses' station without so much as a glance from the young woman sitting behind the desk, her attention immersed in a Harlequin romance, heavy lidded eyes telling him she was one paragraph away from falling dead asleep.

He'd almost reached the double doors which closed off the psych wing from the rest of the floor, their thick double-paned windows reinforced by chicken wire, when her voice caught up with him just ahead of the soft padding sound of her rubber-soled shoes.

"Sir! Hey, hold on there, wait a minute sir, you can't go in there!"

A burly uniformed security person materialized in front of him now, seemingly from out of nowhere, the fluorescent lights gleaming coolly off the snout of his dull gray .38 automatic.

Joe turned away carefully from the guard, keeping one eye on his weapon, and directed his entreaty to the pretty dark-haired nurse who paused warily a few feet away.

"Please Miss, Miss ...Feinstein," he read off the plastic name tag on her breast; "I've got to see my fiancée. I just got a call from the priest who's here with her; it's a life and death matter."

"Oh! You must be Mr. Marten; Father Muldoon said to expect you. It's okay Sam," she said to the guard. "Dr. Richardson gave special permission for this man to pass on religious grounds."

Reluctantly the rent-a-cop replaced his pistol - probably never get a chance to use the damn thing - then withdrew a set of keys from a chain attached to his belt. He opened the double doors and moved aside, giving Joe a curt nod as he passed.

"Room 357," the nurse called after him; "about halfway down the hall on the left. Sam'll have to accompany you as far as the door: I believe the doctor's still in with her."

At the sound of the door, the three other occupants of the room hovering near the patient turned as one. Behind them Joe saw that Marija was sitting up in the bed, her eyes enormous beneath the gauzy white bandage covering her forehead, her face a sickly grey.

Mike's tall lean frame was positioned protectively between MJ and the two hospital personnel - the young resident Joe had met earlier and an old, salty-looking RN who stood near the foot of the bed, holding a stainless steel tray containing vials of medication and a pair of paper-packaged syringes. She shifted her ample weight from one painful foot to the other, impatient to get on with it. The doctor avoided looking at Joe, instead busying himself consulting the patient's chart and checking his watch, an annoyed expression on his face.

Marija was staring at Joe through a gradually clearing fog. "Joe!" she exclaimed weakly as recognition came. She held out her arms to him.

He held her tightly, surprised to find tears coursing down his cheeks.

After a moment he felt a gentle tug at his arm. It was Muldoon. "I need to talk to you for a minute outside," he said in a low voice. "We'll be right back sweetie," he assured Marija, giving her arm an affectionate squeeze.

Joe winced at the man's familiarity with his girl. He bent to kiss her full on the mouth. "Be right back," he repeated, following the priest into the hall.

"So what now, Father," Joe asked once they were out of earshot. They'd left the door to the hospital room ajar, affording them an unobstructed view of the injured woman - and the medics.

"As things stand, they won't allow Marija to decide for herself if she should be put on drug therapy or not: They've deemed her incompetent to act on her own behalf." Mike's voice was edgy with irony. "After she and I refused to allow such treatment - I literally had to block her with my body at one point \- they called her mother, as next of kin, for permission to proceed. They're planning to have her made Marija's guardian ad litem for all future care as well. The woman is on her way over right now, gleefully ready to sign the consent forms from the sounds of it."

"But where do I fit in?" Joe protested. "Don't I have any say in all this?"

"I asked them that. Not as her fiancée you don't, but as her _husband_ you would have the right to stop them. You'd be the 'next of kin' then."

"Fine, only I'm not her husband yet, so how..."

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. I could marry the two of you here tonight...that is, if you're really serious about wanting this marriage with her. If you're not," he admonished; "please have the courage and honesty to say so right now. In the Catholic Church marriage is a sacrament: I don't perform sacraments lightly no matter what the extenuating circumstances might be."

"Of course I'm serious," Joe frowned. "It's just that...Well, first of all, I don't see how we can possibly get married tonight, when we haven't had the blood tests, the three day wait, all that. Why, we don't even have a license!"

"The tests and three-day wait can be waived under California law in certain instances," explained the pastor. "You _have_ , in essence, been cohabitating as man and wife for at least thirty days?"

"As for the license, I took the liberty of asking Mrs. McGilvroy to bring over a blank civil document from my supply at the church, just in case you said yes," he offered a weakly apologetic smile. "She should be here at any moment. So....?"

Joe looked at the other man, his doubtful expression slowly giving way to an ever widening grin.

"I'll be damned," he laughed; "a checkmate! I'm actually getting hitched!"

A few minutes later the duty nurse delivered a manila envelope addressed to the Rev. Michael Muldoon, containing the blank certificate of marriage. She then remained, at the priest's request and with the physician's reluctant approval, to witness the brief religious ceremony that followed.

When the ceremony was complete - the final "What God has joined together let no man put asunder, Amen," still resounding in the air, Muldoon found himself stifling an unprofessional giggle. Although he had no idea where it was coming from, the urge to laugh grew, until he could hold it back no more: It burst forth from him in a rolling wave that quickly infected Joe and Marija, the three of them laughing so hard that they collapsed in helpless glee, tears streaming down their cheeks. Even the young ward nurse couldn't help chuckling along with them, while the doctor and the dour-faced RN - trying in vain to quiet the raucous group from waking the whole ward - exchanged looks that said they'd like to ECT the whole lot.

When at last the laughter had run itself out, the doctor drew Joe aside. "May I assume you wish to take your new bride home with you tonight?" His voice dripped sarcasm.

"If I can, sure," Joe answered, a little surprised.

"In that case I have a few forms for you to sign before we can release her into your custody; a legal waiver and so forth."

The resident's eyes were red-rimmed with exhaustion by this time, his earlier buoyancy reduced to a plodding roteness as he neared the end of his 36 hour shift. It would be far easier, he decided, to do the paperwork on a release-against-medical-advice than to try to explain to the chief of psychiatry why the woman was still occupying a much needed bed while refusing all medication and treatment.

By the time Joe returned from the task, Marija had already been helped into her clothes by the older nurse and was waiting in a wheelchair by the nurses' station with Mike by her side. The RN insisted on doing the pushing herself.

"Regulations," she explained tersely, still bristling with barely concealed outrage at having been thwarted from putting the woman under like she deserved.

"Your mother's downstairs," Joe whispered in MJ's ear as he bent to kiss her cheek, waiting for the elevator.

"Mmmm hmmm," Marija smiled drowsily, leaning affectionately against his side, still slightly out of it from the earlier dose of seconal. The memory of her recent ordeal was safely tucked away for now under the cover of protective forgetfulness, fading like the terror of a nightmare does once the prison of sleep has been escaped.

"Want me to get rid of her?" Joe suggested.

"Mmmm hmmm," she nodded. She could barely keep her eyes open in the thick honeyed glow of well-being that the drugs - coupled with the mystically unreal notion that she and Joe were now married -infused in her.

Joe sent the priest on ahead to dispatch Mrs. Draekins on whatever pretext he could muster while he, MJ and the grumbling nurse waited for the next elevator.

Once Marija was settled into the deep bucket seat of Joe's sports car and the iron haired nurse had departed, Joe and Mike stood alone in the cool mist of predawn San Francisco, trying to decide what to do next.

"Here it is, my wedding night," he glanced up at the lightening sky - "morning" he corrected himself - "and all I can think about is the fact that I've got to be at work in three hours."

"On a Saturday?"

"I took off early yesterday after Marija's accident; left an important job half done," Joe sighed. "If I don't complete it by Monday morning it's my ass."

"Well frankly," Mike looked down through the windshield at the bride, already fast asleep with her head lolled uncomfortably to one side, lips slightly parted; "it doesn't look like Marija's got her mind on much of a honeymoon night anyway, at least not at the moment.

Joe glanced through the window, then smiled fondly. "Sleep's probably what she needs most right now. But even so I don't want her to be alone. She's not safe."

"I've got an idea," the priest offered. "Why don't you bring her on over to the rectory? Mrs. McGilvroy can keep an eye on her while you're at work: I've got a pretty busy day myself," he reflected, thinking of the half-written sermon on his desk, the long hours he'd be spending in the confessional later today as people sought to erase the sins of the week in time for Sunday mass. "You can come back as soon as you're caught up on your job, and then decide what you want to do for the long haul."

Mrs. McGilvroy met them at the rectory door. Her nightly costume of robe and curlers had been traded for a calf-length blue print housedress. A bulky home knit sweater covered her shoulders and a red kerchief was tied babushka style over the yellowish-grey mass of uncombed frizz that framed her round, wrinkled apple face. With her practical low-heeled shoes and woolen stockings the sixty-something widow was the personification of an old world peasant: staid, sturdy, unflappable, with an iron-bound code of ethics that could never be compromised...unless of course she chose to bend them a bit for the greater good.

"I've made up the bed fresh in your room for her, Father," the woman said brusquely, turning to lead the way as Mike and Joe, the latter carrying the still-sleeping Marija in his arms, followed obediently."

"Mind you," Mrs. M argued to the air as she limped arthritically down the hall; " I did have some serious reservations as to the propriety of putting a pretty young woman to bed in a priest's own quarters. But then I said to myself, 'who's to know as long as none of us tell 'em?'" She paused a moment to give each in turn a look that could best be described as tacitly threatening.

Opening the door to the pastor's sparsely furnished bedroom and stepping aside to let the others past, she prattled on: "More important than propriety, I told myself, is to keep this poor soul safe from further harm; and what place could be safer and more sanctified than a holy man of God's own bedroom? Naturally the entire rectory has been blessed, but I'll wager that the very bed where a man of the cloth puts his cares to rest each night must be doubly so, wouldn't you think? In any case, it's not the same as if she were a single lady, is it? I mean to say, she is a respectable married woman now, blessed by the holy sacrament this very night."

She bestowed the slightest hint of an approving smile on Joe as she said this, then turned down the bedcovers and took a step back to allow him to lay his new wife gently on the mattress. MJ stirred slightly in her sleep, but did not wake up.

"It's fine, Mrs. McGilvroy," the priest said warmly, giving her shoulder an affectionate pat. "Thank you for thinking of it."

"Go on now with you," the woman squirmed and blushed. "You two just scoot on out of her and go about your business. I'll keep careful watch over the little lady, don't you worry. Nothing is going to bother her as long as I'm here. Oh, and there's a fresh pot of coffee on the warmer, Father. You just help yourselves."

"How did she know to fix the bedroom up for MJ?" Joe asked as soon as they were seated in the comfortable kitchen, out of earshot. "Did you call her on the way back from the hospital?"

Mike finished pouring the coffee and set the old blue enamel pot back on the warmer before answering.

"I did give her a quick call, but she already had the room ready by then," he answered, a glint of amusement in his brown eyes. "And no, I didn't plan this all out beforehand, although I did brief Mrs. M on what's been happening to your wife when I asked her to bring the marriage certificate to the hospital. I felt I owed her some sort of explanation for dragging her out of bed in the middle of the night," he apologized: "No breach of confidence intended."

"Oh, that's all right...but then why did she prepare the bedroom before you even called?"

"Mrs. McGilvroy, for all her old world conservatism, is an extremely sensitive person," the priest smiled; "which is just another way of saying she has a bit of magic in her genes I think. Purely white magic, to be sure - but she does blow my mind from time to time," he admitted. "That's why I feel very good about leaving Ms. Draekins - pardon me, Mrs. Marten - in her care today. I'm afraid I'm going to be tied up most of the day in the confessional, and with you also working it's a great relief to know there's someone like her to take charge. I promise I'll look in on Marija from time to time, just to be sure everything's okay, but I don't think you have anything to worry about. Do you want me to give you a call after each check so you can rest a little easier too?"

Joe exhaled, rubbing his temples. "Yeah, sure, that'd be fine. I'll probably be out on my service call most of the day, but if I don't pick up just leave me a message if you don't mind."

"Sure, no problem," Mike nodded, draining the contents of his cup and pushing away from the table. "So, my friend, just relax and finish your coffee - have a second cup if you like, it's right there - but as for me, if you'll forgive my rudeness, I'm afraid I have to get cleaned up and changed into the proper vestments. The confessional opens at 6AM and there's always a line of impatient sinners waiting for quick absolution so they can get out to the links ahead of the crowds." He grinned as he said this, but it failed to disguise the slightly bitter edge to his voice. Joe darted him a quick apprising glance, but aside from a barely perceptible shrug Mike pretended not to notice.

Thirty minutes later, when the priest went around to the front of the old brick church to unlock the large double doors at the main entrance, there was already a short, informal queue formed. Father Muldoon flipped on the low-intensity illumination for the chapel from the master control box near the doorway, then proceeded ahead of the parishioners, genuflecting at the center aisle before continuing with unhurried deliberation through the nave to the chancel to light the altar candles. He forced himself to ignore the impatient coughs and shuffles of his restless flock while performing these rituals, suppressing the urge to take even longer than was necessary. But by the time he finally entered the dark cubicle of the confessional it was nearly 6:15.

For the next four hours the pastor listened halfheartedly to the endless series of mostly menial and boring revelations from the stream of sinners that came forth to clear their consciences that day, finding it hard not to compare their minor complaints and human errors with what the girl in his rectory bedroom was going through. When at last the morning confessional session ended, the distracted priest all but leapt from the tiny booth, his hasty exit nearly bowling over his last parishioner, who cringed and hid her identity behind her black silk scarf as she made her way to the altar to do penance.

He left through a side door in the vestry, rushing across the yard to the rectory, a knot of anxiety tightening his stomach muscles. But when he entered the house he saw Marija and Mrs. McGilvroy sitting amiable at the kitchen table, faces bent over cups of strong English tea, and his usual lunch laid out on the table beside them.

Though he hadn't much appetite, he ate what he could so as not to offend his housekeeper. Finally he pushed the plate away and got to his feet. "Thank you Mrs. M, delicious as usual. Now, if you'll excuse me and Mrs. Marten," he turned to Marija; "I'd like to have a little talk with you in my office if you feel up to it?"

He reached down as he said this and, taking her hand, drew MJ to her feet. She followed him placidly enough, though still abnormally quiet and withdrawn as he'd noticed during lunch, but there seemed to be a tiny drag of resistance in her steps. She sat meekly where he indicated as he closed his office door behind them, one hand playing aimlessly with her hair while the other picked imaginary lint balls off the white cotton nightgown Mrs. M had provided.

He almost hated to ask the question they both knew was coming, but if he was to help her he had to know.

"What happened yesterday, Marija?"

Her mouth opened and closed several times as she tried to reply. Then the tears began, choking off any further attempts. All she could do was cry, shake her head, cry some more, her great green eyes lonely and lost.

"Was it the dragon again, Marija?"

She nodded, and the flow of tears increased alarmingly, rivers of tears, more than he would have thought possible for a body to hold.

"In the office....your boss?" He was going on instinct now.

She nodded again, her face twisting in agony at the awful memory. Her mouth opened to speak, but only a low gurgling moan escaped.

"And later, in front of that store...the bookstore?" He persisted. "Was it he that made you fall into the glass window?"

Once more the start of a nod, a hesitation, then quickly she shook her head to the negative. The tears were drying up now, her body's store of them drained and depleted, yet her body continued to shake and tremble in silent convulsive sobs.

"Then what _did_ happen there, Marija? Please, I must know if I am to help you." He resisted the urge to come around the side of the desk that separated them, take her in his arms, and hold her until the pain and fear went away. He knew that his strength, not his sympathy, was what she needed now, and to give that strength distance must be maintained.

"The reflection," she faltered in a low quavering voice barely audible to his straining ears; "The reflection in the glass...was me. The demon...it was me, the demon was _me_!! Her whisper had the undertones of a scream, all the more terrifying in its quiet, dead certainty.

Mike got around the desk just in time to catch her collapsing form as it slid from the chair to the floor. She had fainted. He hoisted the unconscious woman easily into his arms, holding her with the gentle strength of a father carrying a sleeping child, and bellowing for Mrs. McGilvroy as he headed for the bedroom. The elderly housekeeper was right on his heels, clucking like an anxious mother hen as he laid MJ on the bed.

The housekeeper immediately took over, pushing him firmly out of the way while she ministered to the girl, pinching and prodding her cheeks, arms and shoulders to bring her around. As soon as Mike saw Marija begin to stir, saw her cradled in the soothing arms of Mrs. M while she sobbed and hiccupped like a little girl, he strode back into his office, slamming the door behind him.

The priest was shaking with fury, determined to break through the bureaucratic bullshit of the church hierarchy and get this poor woman the help she needed - the _exorcism_ she needed - to save her mortal soul. Yet even as he picked up the phone, he was remembering the slap in the face he'd received five days earlier when he'd taken Marija's case before the Archbishop of San Francisco the first time. With the help of the Archbishop's secretary, a sweet faced red-headed young priest who was naive enough to believe the church was still in the business of saving souls, he was given an appointment to speak with Archbishop Quillans in person. However the look of cold disdain in the Archbishop's eyes when Muldoon handed him the petition for rites of exorcism had shocked him then, and shocked him still in memory. It was more than disdain, something bordering on hatred he'd felt coming from the man of God.

"This, your Excellency," he'd said; "contains a taped account of a young woman's recent experience with what appears to be a very powerful demon spirit. There may be lesser evil spirits involved as well, possibly under the main spirit's control. I am of the opinion that it is a genuine case of diabolic obsession and possibly incipient demonic possession, and am thus petitioning for permission to administer the rites of exorcism on her behalf."

"I see," the Archbishop had said, after an interminable moment of deadly scrutiny, his grey eyes piercing Muldoon's to the point where it took every bit of will to not look away. "And has she sought psychiatric help?" he inquired, his fingers forming a thoughtful V as the tips touched his pursed lips.

"I, uh, I know that as a rule we are supposed to advise those troubled souls professing such ... _symptoms_ to go first to a mental health professional for diagnosis and treatment. However in cases of true demonic obsession or possession I believe such a course could be potentially devastating. The psychiatric community's propensity for using psychoactive drugs or even electroshock therapy as a 'cure' for mental illness could dull the mind, spirit and will to the point a person would be left at the complete mercy of these evil forces."

"Are you suggesting," the other had sneered, "that a doctor who's spent twelve or more years learning about mental disorders - and who knows how many more in practical application of his knowledge to cure people of such diseases - is more likely to misdiagnose a case of mental illness than you are? Such arrogance is not befitting a member of the priesthood."

"No your Excellency," Mike had replied, resisting the urge to back up in his chair or jump defensively to his feet. "I am simply saying that, whereas a psychiatrist might be an expert in identifying and labeling mental illnesses, he would never recognize a genuine case of demonic obsession or possession because there is no room in his texts or his philosophy for such an option. It simply doesn't exist."

"Well Father Muldoon, since you have presumed to bypass all regular channels to come here with this information today," he indicated the tape and the petition with a curt nod and dismissive wave; "you might as well leave it. I'll look it over when I find the time."

With that, Archbishop Quillans had extended his ring to be kissed; and Father Michael Muldoon, rising obediently to perform the ritual, had been summarily dismissed.

Muldoon now looked at the phone in his hand, then down the hall where the woman still cried quietly in the housekeeper's ample arms. He sighed, and began to dial.

The cultured voice on the other end of the line was hard and cold as tempered steel.

"You seem to have a great deal of influence with my personal secretary, Father Muldoon. I'll have to speak to him about that." The words were clipped, the sharp-edged tongue just short of sarcasm. "I do hope for both your sakes that this call is as important as you purport. I am _extremely_ busy."

"Then I must apologize for disturbing your Excellency," Muldoon replied without much sincerity. "However the matter I am calling about truly cannot wait another minute. It's the possession of the young woman I spoke to you about last Tuesday. I feel certain that true demonic possession is now occurring. You really must approve the petition for exorcism at once if we are to save this person's immortal soul!"

Mike's voice had risen in excitement as he spoke: But his entreaty was met with a long disquieting silence. When the Archbishop finally spoke, his tone was a study in controlled outrage.

"Do you presume to _order_ this office, Father Muldoon?"

"No sir, no your Excellency: Forgive my unfortunate choice of words," Mike faltered, backpedalling quickly, his clean line of purpose now confused and wavering. "I merely wished to urge, to _implore_ your office to act with merciful haste in light of what has just happened to this unfortunate young woman."

"Which is?" came the icy reply.

"She was, it seems, confronted by a full blown physical manifestation of Satan while she was at work yesterday. I don't have all the details yet;" his words were beginning to rush out, tumbling over each other disjointedly; "because of course she's still too distraught to talk about it much, but it appears she fled in terror after the encounter and began running through the city streets. Then at some point she saw her reflection in a shop window, and saw her own face turn into that of the demon as if she had now fully become him. She hurled herself through that plate glass window in an apparent attempt to thwart the incipient possession."

"And what professional care has she been given? Have you sought psychiatric consultation on her case, either before or since this incident, as I advised earlier?"

"Yes...at least in a sense. That is, she was taken to a hospital and kept there for psychiatric observation and treatment last night. But the seconal they were giving her made her increasingly susceptible to the possession: I personally observed her being overcome by a demon spirit and though I managed to pull her out of it with prayer and guidance, their response to the incident was to recommend even more and stronger drugs, so I stepped in and got her released early this morning before they could make things any worse."

"You did what?!" the voice bellowed, all semblance of self-control shattered. Then the deadly silence resumed, broken only by rapid, harsh breathing on the other end of the line that slowly diminished. After a while the voice of the Archbishop resumed, its icy calm restored.

"Father Muldoon, it might interest you to know that I have been reviewing your personnel records since I last spoke with you. It appears you have displayed something of a preoccupation - a personal fetish, one might suggest - with the subject of demon possession and rites of exorcism. It appears you were placed on probation while still in seminary for this very matter, presuming to know more than your superiors about how such things should be dealt with....were you not?"

"Uh, Archbishop I..."

"Yes or now, Muldoon."

"Yes." A heavy sigh.

"Then you may consider yourself on probation again!" It was like a book slamming closed. "And if your parish is of any importance to you, I would advise you to tread very carefully on this and any other religious matters you presume to bring to my attention from this point forward: Do you understand?"

"You pissant!" Mike thought angrily, slamming his fist against the desk in frustration. Well, he wouldn't just let this drop, threat or no. "I do understand, Your Excellency," he said aloud, his voice now as icy as the Archbishop's. "But what about the woman, what of _her_ welfare?"

"Put your information on the proper lines, Muldoon, and it will be dealt with appropriately in due time. Now if you will excuse me, I have much to do before my flight to Rome this evening."

"Rome!" Mike exclaimed, a jumble of worried questions assaulting his mind. _Why? For how long? What about the petition while you're gone? What about Marija?_

"Where have you been, Father Muldoon, aside from chasing imaginary dragons that is?" The Archbishop said. "It's been all over the news. The Holy Father was stricken early this morning with a massive cerebral hemorrhage. His condition is now extremely critical; comatose, I understand. But just before he lapsed into unconsciousness he specifically ordered that I be flown to his side." There was a gloating pride in Quillan's voice that Mike felt was completely inappropriate to the situation. The Pope is _dying_?!

"I depart for the Vatican at seven tonight, and it's uncertain how long I will remain. Bishop Dumore will be handling the normal business of the diocese in my absence, but special matters such as your petition will just have to wait until I return."

Stunned, Mike mumbled his condolences and hung up, his mind in a turmoil.

Chapter 4

Saturday, June 10th

San Francisco

Joe finished the service call just before 4pm, and climbed wearily into his little red sports car. For a long time he just sat there, trying to think - or not think - about what was happening to his life, to what he might have to face when he returned to the rectory, and Marija.

He finally turned the ignition key, shifted into low and pulled out of the parking lot, fully intending to head home, but as he passed Fell street without turning he knew he wasn't ready.

"I love you, babe, I really do," he muttered aloud. "But good God, I just don't know what I've gotten myself into here! I don't understand what's happening to you and I don't know what to do to get you out of it!"

He drove through the city streets without thought of where he was or where he was going, his reflexes shifting gears, slowing, stopping and turning without conscious thought while his mind boiled darkly on the impossible situation. And at the bottom of his personal torment he felt an unwarranted anger at Marija for putting him in such a place.

Joe wished the previous day's experience could be written off as some sort of hallucination, some kind of psychotic episode that a few prescription meds and some hours on the couch could cure. That he could live with, that he could understand. Yet he couldn't write it off that easy, any more than he could write off the event that had started this ongoing nightmare two weeks earlier, nor any of the increasingly horrifying manifestations that had plagued their lives ever since.

He wanted to believe in the rational, the real, the physical world of matter that abided by the laws of nature and physics. He wanted to hold onto that predictable world that had had his back like a loyal friend ever since childhood. Yet hadn't there always been this other world, this sense of a strange intangible universe lying just below the surface of reality, with monsters lurking beneath the grey skin of a depthless sea, ready to spring out if you but acknowledged their presence: A world thus best ignored?

As he stopped at an intersection, he found his attention captured by the red traffic light, glowing in the dusk like a red ball, which brought with it some distant memory of comfort and safety.

There was a little red night light that glowed in the dark next to his bed in the old wooden farmhouse where he'd grown up, a red ball balanced on the nose of a small grey plastic seal plugged into the outlet beside his nightstand. His mom had put it there the day after Harold left for good.

Harold!

The memories flooded in like water released from a dam. Suddenly Joe realized he hadn't always been so firmly entrenched in the world of hard core realism.

Harold was his "invisible friend"- a friend more real than most he'd known since - a being with whom he'd talked and played for hours on end when he was too little to know better; a friend who'd told him secrets that he was too young to really understand.

Harold had left for good the day his daddy delivered a solid open-hand roundhouse to seven year old Joey's cheek that sent him flying across the room and left a handprint bruise for a month, telling him never to mention that "imaginary fag friend" of yours again.

No daddy, he didn't want the guys down at the plant teasing him about having a pansy for a son. Yes daddy, he knew there was no such thing as an invisible person. No daddy, he'd never talk to Harold again, there was no Harold.

But without Harold who was going to keep the monsters lurking beneath the skin of the iron sea at bay?

When dark fell each night, his fear mounted to an almost uncontrollable panic after the banishment of Harold, who had served to keep it all in check, to keep him safe. Mother had understood; and the little grey seal with the glowing red ball balanced on his nose had helped for a while.

When his father discovered the night light, however, he'd wrenched it from the wall socket and smashed it to bits beneath his heavy work boots. Then he'd gone to work on Joey's mother.

"Ya want to turn him into a goddam sissy, Ethel? Is that what you want? You'd like that, wouldn't you, make him into a little mama's boy just to spite me?!"

His father had been bellowing, his rage reaching its peak when his mother foolishly started to argue - understanding the degree of her son's night terrors - and his father had slapped her so hard she'd fallen to the floor bleeding from nose and mouth.

"No fucking lights, Ethel!! Done!"

The night light was never replaced. The lights stayed off, the door closed, and the ominous darkness mounted each night like impending doom, filling the wide eyed hours of sightless horror until weariness would finally overcome the boy despite his certainty that to sleep was to die in the grip of some nameless faceless monster.

"Now son," his father had explained a few days later with phony geniality, his bearish arm around the small boy's quivering shoulders; "you know that what you can't see can't hurt you, right? If you can't see it, smell it, touch it or give it a good goose, it just ain't there...and don't you forget it, boy, hear?"

Joey had just nodded, too afraid to protest, the vision of his mother - plopped down there on the floor, legs askew and blood pouring from her nose and mouth - still too vivid in his mind.

Fear of father trumped fear of darkness, in that reality he could agree.

Once his mother had tried to sneak a new night light into his room after his father had gone to bed, but the boy had just kissed her and shook his head: "No mom, it's okay. I'm doing fine."

Nothing was worth seeing her hurt again; but it was months, years even, before he got a good night's sleep. In the end, however, his father's philosophy had won out, made him comfortable with the dark, with ignoring the dark side. Because, you see, there _was_ no dark side, really. Because, you see; "If you can't see it, smell it or give it a good goose, it just ain't there."

Right Dad.

"Only what do you do about this shit, dad?" he asked aloud, pounding the heel of his hand against the steering wheel in a steady rhythm. "How do you goose this old crappola, huh, with demons crawling out from behind the mirror of the material world? How do I hold onto Marija and still hold onto your version reality? You want me to dump the crazy bitch or what, _huh_?"

He felt like crying, so empty was the thought. Suddenly he was crying, sobbing so hard he had to pull over to the curb until it passed.

He couldn't lose her.

He didn't care what it took to get a handle on this thing - faith and all the hokum that want with it were just fine, so long as they worked. He'd try anything. And he didn't want to understand, not any of it. He just wanted it out of their lives, all this shit out of their lives; God, the devil, whoever and whatever it was...Just go away and leave us alone, okay?

"I'll do anything, okay?"

Joe had been on automatic pilot the past half hour, not knowing where he was going, nor caring. Now, as he looked around to get his bearings, he discovered that he was parked down in the Marina district, and directly across the street was an oversized Victorian Mansion. Its surrounding grounds were an unkempt profusion of hedges and gardens gone wild, its exterior freshly painted black on black. Startled he jerked his foot, stalling the engine.

He restarted the car and circled the block so that he could come around in front of the building, pulling up to read the nearly printed wooden signboard attached to the high wrought iron fence that surrounded the three story mansion: "Church of Satanic Principles - Alton B. Hawley, Founder and High Priest."

His breath let out in a slow whoosh, skin crawled in an inadvertent shudder at the capriciousness of fate. One day last week, as Marija's condition began to worsen, he'd gone through the phone book looking up resources under various headings such as churches, psychic counselors, spiritual centers and so forth. This was one of the cults on his list, one of the metaphysical groups he'd written down with the thought he might check them out as possible alternatives to the exorcism thing if it didn't work out.

He moved his shoulders uneasily, as if to dislodge the invisible hand he felt pushing him along this path. Of course it was probably mere coincidence that he ended up here: Better yet, since he had originally written this place down on his list, perhaps he had subconsciously steered the car to this exact destination. That must be it.

He continued to stare at the contrivedly sinister-looking house, the engine of his Alfa still humming a deep throaty purr. It was the movement that finally made up his mind, the slightest flick at the side of the heavy black drapes that covered the tall bay windows fronting the house. He'd obviously been spotted by someone inside: Now he must either go up to the door or scratch the place off his list. No way he could leave and then come back later.

"Okay, let's do this," he said, taking a deep breath and turning off the ignition. "Probably just a pile of bs anyway."

He walked up to the gate, trying to look nonchalant, but his heart thudded loudly enough to be heard, and his hand slipped the first time he tried the latch, so he had to clench it into a hard fist to stop its shaking before trying again.

There was the errant hope at the back of his mind that the gate would be locked, but it slid open easily under his touch, the well-oiled noiselessness of its movement somehow more eerie than the expected creak would have been.

The blackness of the massive entryway was relieved only by a single spot of color, a greenish metal gargoyle doorknocker with bright red eyes made of glass.

A little smile twitched the corners of Joe's mouth: the place was just a bit too Hollywood to be believed.

The door was opened on his second tentative rap by a tall slender girl of about nineteen. His mouth opened involuntarily, the carefully rehearsed line stuck somewhere around his Adam's apple, forgotten.

She was breathtakingly beautiful, with a waist-length mane of reddish-gold hair flowing down her back and over the front of her deep plum colored gown, sliding along the creamy white curves of her firm young breasts.

The deep V cut of the silky dress was laced from waist to cleavage with a velvet ribbon, and he felt an almost uncontrollable urge to reach out and loosen the ties.

His eyes lifted to her face. An amused, subtly seductive smile played about her lips, her lavender eyes twinkling mischievously as she slid a slender hand across her chest, toying with the ribbon.

"Yes?" she enquired in a low voice. The _yes_ could have meant anything.

"I...ahem," he cleared his throat noisily, irritated with himself for this nervous habit. "I wish to see Mr. Hawley."

"I'm sorry, that's quite impossible," the girl said, shaking her head. Thick silken tresses moved in gentle waves about her face. She continued to look at him, emanating sensuality, but when he failed to respond she frowned and moved as if to close the door.

"Wait, please: It's very important that I see him!"

"Well?" the young woman prodded impatiently, already tiring of the game.

"My fiancé...that is, my _wife_ ," he corrected lamely, feeling a little guilty now about the way he'd been staring at the girl; "has been having some, uh, unusual experiences. She seems to believe that demons are after her." He held up his hands as if to say "You know how it goes."

The woman looked at him for a moment without speaking, a quizzical expression on her face; then she opened the door just wide enough to allow him entrance.

He was in a long broad hallway from which a steep banistered spiral staircase rose gracefully on the left and an open doorway invited to the right. The interior decor - just as the exterior - was painted entirely in black, the walls softly muted and the trim a shiny lacquer. A plush, blood red carpet graced the floor and stairs, swallowing all sound.

The only illumination was provided by an old brass chandelier directly overhead, and three or four wall sconces along the stairwell, their dim red bulbs casting an eerie claret glow that created weird shadows on the walls and ceiling.

The girl led him through the doorway into a front parlor and indicated a plush purple velvet chair.

He sat.

"Wait here, I'll go get my mother," she said.

There was something so mundane, so intrinsically human in that last statement - especially in the context of this cabalistic atmosphere - that he nearly laughed out loud.

The parlor was another Disney attempt at Halloween: black walls, black drapes, blood-red sconce lights and carpet, a human skeleton in a glass case, and a stuffed doglike creature neatly labeled "Albanian Werewolf" beside the fireplace. There was a surgical cabinet next to his chair containing, among other magical appurtenances, several small grey packets marked "graveyard dust"; while from the mantle of the fireplace a matched set of genuine human skulls grinned happily down at him, absurd-looking fat wax candles protruding from the top of their crania.

Joe was watching the doorway, waiting for the red-haired girl's return, when he felt a sudden chill on the back of his neck. He turned to see a woman float soundlessly into the room from an unseen door behind him. At first, in the dim light, he thought it was the daughter returning alone.

"What happened, where's your mother?" he started to ask, but before the words were formed on his lips the woman stepped into the light, smiling coldly.

"I am the mother," she said. "Diana, high priestess of Satan's temple."

She extended a hand; it was soft, smooth, exquisitely well-cared for. Her face, but for a sprinkling of giveaway age lines at the corners of the large grey eyes, was also flawless. Had he not known she had a grown daughter he would have guessed her age at no more than thirty. The river of thick blond hair was identical to her daughter's - though perhaps a trace paler, a touch longer. The gown, of similar cut and design to the younger woman's, was black, and the breasts and thighs outlined beneath the sleek, clinging fabric were a little fuller.

Suddenly he wanted her so badly he ached.

She smiled in acknowledgment of his desire, as if it were expected, then got on with business. Sitting carefully on the edge of the red velvet Victorian sofa across from him, she leaned forward confidentially, her soft hot hand placed gently on his knee, her full white breasts straining against the thin ribbon lacing.

"Now then," she said in a low, conspiratorial whisper; "why don't you tell me what's on your mind dear?"

_Fucking_ , he thought. He swallowed hard, took a breath.

"I'd hoped I could speak with Mr. Hawley about a personal problem," he faltered.

"Well first you must speak with me," the woman said, sitting back. A chill had crept into her voice. "I'll decide if what you have to say is worthy of the Black Pope's consideration. And frankly, I'm a bit short on time."

She flounced back against the cushions, waving her arm imperiously for him to get on with it.

Pointedly staring at his feet to avoid her breasts, Joe related in a rushed monotone an abbreviated version of what had been happening to Marija since the first incident with the demons during astral projection, including the involvement of the priest.

"Why come to us," Diana asked archly when he was finished. "Why not just let her have her little Catholic rites of exorcism and be done with it?"

"Because I think it's pure crap," Joe burst out, surprising even himself with his vehemence. "And even if it could do some good, like a placebo effect or something, I don't think the church is going to approve it. Father Muldoon as much as admitted so, but I think what he really wants is...." He stopped himself before he could voice the unthinkable, the unfair accusation that stemmed from his own ego and jealousy. He rubbed his forehead, reforming his thoughts. "It's just that I don't want to see Marija going off the deep end while the Catholic church puts her on hold, playing their weird-ass bureaucratic games, you know?"

"But why us," she smiled, looking a little more pleased with him. "What do you think Satan worshippers can do to help?"

"I'm not sure," Joe shook his head. "I just thought that if anyone knew how to deal with the devil - presuming that's what this is about- it would be people like you."

"Deal?" A plucked and painted eyebrow rose archly above the grey eye; "You want us to make a _deal_ with the devil?"

"No! Yes....I don't know," Joe stammered, confused. "I didn't mean _deal_ in that way, exactly. I just want all this bullshit to stop; I want things back to normal; I want to get on with our lives. No religions, no ghosts, no devils...just us, you understand? The way it was before."

"All right," the woman rose decisively. Joe stumbled clumsily to his feet in suit. "Tomorrow, three PM. Bring the woman with you."

"But..."

"Bring the woman. Nothing can be done without her consent. No woman, no audience. And for our initial consultation, the donation is one hundred dollars, cash."

"As the door closed behind him, Joe could only wonder how he was going to convince Marija to come here with him tomorrow.

***

"So what do you think?" the big bearded man said between mouthfuls of spaghetti, the bright yellow light of a modern chrome chandelier reflecting dully off his gleaming hairless skull as he bent over the blue and white Wedgewood china plate.

"Mmm, I'm not sure. He seems to have money, drives a late model Alfa Romeo."

"Well, that's a decent start," the bald man smiled jovially, pinching his wife's well-formed ass through the tight jeans, hard enough to make her jump and send the dishes rattling dangerously in her hands. "What else about him should I know?"

"His wife has some sort of hang-up about demons; she's started seeing a priest about it," the blond woman answered as she rinsed the china before putting it into the dishwasher. "Anyway Joe - that's the guy's name - he's jealous of the priest I could tell, mistrusts religion, and just wants everything to get back to normal. I think he'll pay for that, I think he'll pay plenty," she winked, looking up.

"Is he a wimp?" Hawley asked, pushing back from the table with a satisfied burp.

"Nooo," Diana smiled slyly.

He raised a heavy black brow at her, his brown eyes surprisingly warm in a face that looked chiseled from granite. "Oh?"

"I sensed there might be something remarkable in him," she mused. "He could be quite powerful, I think, but he's afraid to be anything but tiresomely 'normal'."

"Attractive?"

"Mmm-hmm," she raised a brow.

"And his libido?"

"Oh definitely all there...only he fights it so, poor man."

Alton B. Hawley threw back his large head and roared with laughter. "So," he said after a moment; "what does he expect _me_ to do about his problem?"

"Something, anything...I don't think he's got a specific plan or outcome in mind," she answered as she cleared the rest of the dishes from the table. "As I said, he just wants things normal again between him and his old lady. He's apparently ready to try about anything. And with his obvious sexual hang ups, plus his money...shit, we could milk him for quite some time."

"My dear, you have convinced me," the Satanist smiled, rising. "Tomorrow then, three PM, I shall greet your latest friends in full diabolic regalia. But for now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll retire to the tube to see if I can't conjure up enough black magic to make the fucking Giants win at least one game this season."

***

When Joe failed to return to the rectory that afternoon as expected, MJ began to worry, and as the minutes ticked slowly to nightfall, her fears mounted by the minute.

What if he never comes back? Yeah, he married me, but just to get me out of the hospital, just to be a nice guy. He didn't really mean it, though: How could he? Look what I've become!

She tried anger for a while, storming around the small austere bedroom like a caged lioness: _Yeah, Mr._ Nice _Guy, well whatever happened to 'for better or worse', 'sickness and health,' all that crap, huh?_ That phase lasted about ten minutes, then she began to cry, hard burning tears that puddled on the polished wood floor beneath her feet as she sat on the little bed, stifling her sobs so no one would hear. The tears relieved nothing, and still he did not return.

After a time she stopped, all out of tears, and feeling worse than ever. Her head was heavy, eyes puffy and swollen, and a throbbing headache had begun in her temples and worked its way around to form a tightening band of lead around her skull, making her stomach churn uneasily. Weak and dizzy, she propelled herself into the bathroom and vomited, releasing the yellow bile of her emotions.

She dampened a clean white washcloth under the tap in the basin and wiped her face, relishing the cool relief it temporarily brought. She wet it again, then folded it into a neat rectangle and pressed it to her forehead across her hot tired eyes. Stumbling to the bed, Marija lay herself carefully back onto the pillow. After a time she lifted her legs up onto the mattress one at a time, her body stretched out on the bed in a tense equilibrium between passivity and pain. Finally, blessedly, she slept.

It was 9PM before Joe got enough liquid courage down him at a corner bar to return to the rectory.

The priest himself answered the door, looking rough and woodsy in his Pendleton plaid shirt and Levis. "Mrs. M and Marija are both asleep," he whispered as he opened the door wider for Joe to enter. "Come on into my study where we can talk."

"Scotch?" Muldoon offered, taking down a small water glass from the shelf behind his desk and wiping out the dust with his shirttail.

"Fine," Joe nodded, noting the half-empty glass already on the pastor's desk with mild surprise.

Mike caught the look, and nodded, topping off his own drink. "It's been that kind of day," he said, then raised his glass in a toast. "To a better tomorrow."

"Amen to that," Joe agreed.

They drank in silence, savoring the taste of the liquor, the sensation of liquid fire that coursed down their throats, sending its bolts of warmth radiating outward through the veins to soothe and numb and take the edge off their mutual pain.

Joe noticed, without seeming to look at it, the made-up cot in the corner of the room, feeling strangely relieved.

"So," he said casually, raising his eyes to Mike's; "What's the progress on getting that exorcism approved?"

"Not good, Joe," the priest admitted morosely, leaning back in his creaky wooden desk chair and pressing the heels of his hands against his forehead as if he just remembered he had a headache. "The Archbishop's gone off to Rome and the auxiliary bishop left in charge during his absence wouldn't pee without written authorization. There's no way I can get the rites of exorcism approved until Quillans' return."

"So how long will that be? How far does that set things back?"

"I don't know, I really don't. It seems the Pope is dying; he suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage yesterday, and the archbishop was specifically summoned to his side, for what or how long no one seems to know."

"Then why didn't you push for his okay on this thing before he left?" Joe demanded, his voice rising in frustration.

Mike looked at him steadily. "The Pope, the Holy Father, the head of our church, is dying."

"I, I'm sorry, I truly am. I know this must be a huge blow, but..."

"And I did try," the priest continued, looking away. "All I got for my efforts was a formal reprimand and placed on probation."

Mike refilled his guest's glass and his own, then both men sat there in silence, looking at nothing, sipping their drinks.

"Well, you did all you could," Joe said at last.

Mike nodded.

"Looks like it's time to try something else."

"Like what?" the pastor asked, looking hard at Joe. "An exorcism is what's indicated; it's the only thing I know of that could help a situation like Marija's at this point. We'll just have to keep her here where it's safe, where she is protected by the Holy Spirit, until the approval comes through. That's all we _can_ do."

"Maybe not quite all," Joe replied cryptically, a little wave of satisfaction passing through him. Convincing Marija to go to the black church with him tomorrow might not be the insurmountable problem it had seemed, now that the priest and his religion had obviously failed.

Chapter 5

Sunday, June 11th

San Francisco

By the time JM awoke the next morning Mike had already left to serve early Mass, but Mrs. McGilvroy was up - MJ could hear her bustling about the small kitchen beyond the rectory bedroom. After a few minutes the older woman peeked in the doorway, caught Marija's eye, held up an index finger - "Wait a minute" - and disappeared. She was back quickly, a folded and sealed note in her hand. She handed it to the younger woman.

"From the Father," she explained, backing politely away as Marija tore the letter open. "He said to be sure you got it first thing."

" _Dear Mrs. Marten,"_ the note began with a genial formality. " _Your husband dropped by to see you last night after you were asleep. He asked me not to wake you, but said to tell you that he would come by again this morning._

I also want you to know that I will be offering the first Mass this morning on your behalf, in prayer that you and your new marriage may overcome these present adversities to flourish and prosper. Best regards, the Reverend M. Muldoon."

Marija felt a momentary surge of elation as she read and reread the note: Joe _had_ come back to see her last night after all! But then the worry worms began. Why did Father Muldoon feel it necessary to offer a prayer that her marriage would work out? What had Joe said to him? And as the morning wore on with no word from him the small glow of elation withered completely, hope gradually turning to an ugly certainty that what Joe had come back to tell her last night - what he was coming over to say this morning once he got up his nerve - was that it was all too much, that he couldn't take the drama anymore...that it was over.

It was past eleven before MJ heard the unmistakable throaty growl of Joe's sports car as it pulled into the rectory driveway. Her heart leapt with an odd mix of joy and fear, her hands shaking so badly she had to set down her mug of coffee to keep the hot liquid from slopping onto the table. She fumbled a mirrored compact out of the purse on her lap to check her makeup for the hundredth time, fluffing her hair and pulling her bangs back over her forehead. She wet her lips with her tongue, took a deep breath, and as he walked through the door was ready to do anything he asked if she could just keep him.

After a brief superficial round of the required amenities, mostly for Mrs. McGilvroy's benefit, Joe suggested that the two of them go for a drive.

They rode in silence, each casting an occasional worried glance at the other. At last Joe pulled into a dirt parking area on the bluff overlooking the Cliff House restaurant and stormy grey Pacific beyond. There, sheltered from prying eyes and the insistent ocean breeze by a grove of bent and tortured Monterey Pines, Joe turned to the somber, dark haired beauty beside him and, clearing his throat nervously, began his carefully rehearsed speech.

"Marija, there's something I need to talk to you about," he began.

She felt her heart stop, and gripped the sides of the bucket seat fiercely, steeling herself for the blow.

"The reason I brought you all the way out here to talk is because what I'm about to suggest goes against the teaching of the Catholic Church, but I feel - as your husband - I have a right to ask you to try a different avenue of approach to this, this _problem_ you have."

Marija had already started to cry, big soft quiet tears of relief. "Husband," he'd said. "Your husband!" She hadn't heard a word beyond that.

Joe, misinterpreting her reaction, hurriedly went on, determined to convince her to go along with his plan.

"Now come on, babe," he said, putting a hand to her chin and turning her gently to look at him; "you promised me a while back that you'd try other alternatives if this exorcism thing didn't work out, and since that's no longer an option..."

She paled, pushing his hand away:"What do you mean _no longer an option?"_

"Muldoon didn't tell you?"

"No. Tell me what? What's happened?"

"It seems the Archbishop flew off to Rome yesterday for an indefinite stay. Something to do with the Pope having a massive stroke."

"The Holy Father had a stroke?!"

"Anyway, he went without approving your petition for an exorcism, and apparently nothing can be done about it until he returns, which could be weeks I guess."

"But what about me, what am I supposed to do in the meantime, when every day it seems to get a little worse?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about, sweetheart. There's this place I found yesterday that I want to take you to. I think maybe we can get some answers there," he said, taking her hand.

"What place?" She tried to keep her voice neutral, emotions at war between gladness that Joe was trying to help and wariness of what kind of help he might have in mind.

"Listen babe," he said, slipping an arm around her shoulders and drawing her close; "I want you to keep an open mind about this."

"Mmm-hmm," she said, laying her cheek on his chest. "What place?"

"It's just that when this exorcism plan fell through - I mean, it could take weeks or months to get it approved \- I started thinking what we would have to do to keep you protected in the meantime. You'd probably have to continue staying at the rectory, if they let you...It's okay, I understand," he assured her as she jerked her head up to protest; "It's the only place you're really safe; but it's not much of a way to start married life. Can't very well make love to you there, or hold you in my arms as you sleep...I really miss that, you know," he smiled, tweaking her nose.

"Me too," she sighed, putting her head back on his chest. "What place, Joe?"

"It's over in the Marina district, one of the places on that list of places we put together, the occult groups we were going to check out if all else failed?"

"Yeah, I remember....which one?"

"It's called the Church of Satanic Principles."

"The **what**?! Oh Christ Joe," she exclaimed, jerking back from his embrace. "Has everything I've been going through slipped by you or something?!"

"No Marija, I don't think so."

"Sorry, I didn't mean it to come out that way. It's just..." she signed deeply, fidgeted with her hair, knowing there was no way to convey the depth of her horror to him, no way he could ever comprehend the full reality of what had been happening to her no matter how many times or ways she tried to explain it. A part of her mind tended to reject the reality of it herself, to deny or at least downgrade the experiences. If she didn't compartmentalize it this way, she was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to function at all. Yet the enormity of what was happening to her hovered just below the surface every moment, like a caged beast waiting to break free at the first opportunity and devour her mind and soul in its entirety.

"I'm scared, Joe," she said finally, looking over at him.

"Because it's purportedly the Church of Satan, like going into the enemy camp?" He suggested. She gave a tiny nod.

"I understand, I do," he said, taking her hand in both of his. "But I don't think they have any real power. I didn't feel any vibe like that when I stopped by yesterday, like evil lurking about or some such: It's really more like Disney's Haunted Mansion than anything "

"Then why go at all?" she asked over the lump of fear in her throat. "I mean, I'll go if it makes you happy and you're sure it can't hurt, but I don't see why. What I'm going through is real, Joe. If they're just phonies, how can they help?"

"I'm not sure," he acknowledged, letting go of her hands to turn the ignition key. "I just happened across the place purely by accident yesterday after work, and felt like I should go in. Now I'm kind of curious to meet this so called "High Priest" Hawley, and see if he has anything useful to say, any advice to give. It is possible, you know," he shrugged, shifting into reverse and backing cautiously out of the parking lot. "He's reputed to be the world's leading expert on the subject, an extremely articulate and well-read student of the occult according to sources I looked up on Google last night. Majored in Demonology at Weirdo Tech," he winked. "So, even if he is basically a con man, as far as his own powers go, he still might be able to offer some insights that will help. Now," he concluded, flashing a winning smile in her direction; "we still have couple of hours until our appointment, so meantime how about some lunch?"

Chapter 6

Sunday, June 11th

Rome, Italy

Archbishop Robert Quillans seethed beneath his well-tailored business suit. The fact that this clandestine journey had required him shedding the robes and title of his office had - and this he'd _not_ foreseen - also shed him of the prestige and privileges of that office, the respect.

As a result, he'd been standing in the line of foot-shifting, alternately grumbling and wise-cracking tourists \- as if he were one of them - for more than an hour waiting to pass through customs. He hated their closeness, the smell of their breath, the little touches as their bodies inadvertently brushed against his, their stupidity, their cow-like patience and their doglike impatience...God, wouldn't this line ever come to an end?

It was nearly 9:45 that Sunday evening before he was finally allowed to depart the customs area for the main airline terminal. As he walked through the revolving doors into the cooler, mosaic-tiled expanse of the waiting area, a short, plump, middle-aged and offensively greasy little Italian in a sweat-stained, ill-fitting tan suit hurried forward to greet him. The man was holding a small dog-eared photograph in his left hand, which he glanced at surreptitiously before slipping it inside his jacket pocket as he reached to shake the archbishop's hand.

"I see they made sure you'd find me," Quillans smiled coldly with a curt nod at the snapshot of himself, setting down his luggage to give the man's proffered hand a reluctant squeeze.

"Oh, oh yes," the chubby Italian blushed, pumping the visitors hand in both of his with unrestrained enthusiasm. "Yes, your excellency, indeed they did...although if you so easily spotted my little artifice then I am afraid I was not so clever as I'd hoped."

His accent was not as pronounced as Quillans might have expected by looking at the man; even carrying a hint of British undertone. However, he noted, the emissary was now beginning to perspire voluminously, his body odor as well as his breath permeated by an unmistakable essence of garlic. The American turned away with a distasteful expression curling his upper lip and gently pulled his hand free of the functionary's wet clasp, wiping it carefully with a white linen handkerchief before taking up his briefcase once more.

"Shall we proceed," he inquired, moving toward the exit and pointedly leaving the three large suitcases behind for his assigned chauffer to carry.

None of this condescension was lost on the Vatican's representative. The fact that names had not even been exchanged in greeting was an omission of courtesy and custom which made the little Italian fairly itch with discomfiture. But he had been instructed by the Papal Secretary to exercise utmost discretion in dealing with the American Archbishop, and in all matters to follow the visitor's lead. So, if his Excellency wished to be rude, then rude it would be.

He shrugged, then picked up one of the heavy suitcases beneath his arm and, pulling the others behind him on their rollers like trained puppies, dutifully fell in three steps behind the other man.

Outside the terminal a warm, humid blast of night air - filled with the fragrances of sweet wine, pungent spices, a whiff of sea air and a solid dose of diesel fumes - wrapped itself around the obdurate visitor, flapping the bottom of his impeccable grey suit. Suddenly his sensibilities were shattered by a shrill, piercing whistle directly behind his left ear. Annoyed, he turned with a scowl to see his escort hailing a cab out of the whirring maelstrom of traffic in the broad avenue that encircled the international airport at Fumicino.

With studied obsequiousness the former Nuncio to Spain - himself an archbishop only recently recalled to the Vatican for this special assignment - opened the rear door of the taxi for his eminent foreign guest, murmuring in a tone Quillans mistook for abject humility; " The official limousine is parked where it will draw no undue attention. We'll be transferring to it shortly, and I will be your driver tonight. Again, I do apologize to your Excellency for any inconvenience we have caused you by these necessary precautions."

The archbishop from San Francisco acknowledged and dismissed the other man's apology with a contemptuous wave of his hand, closing the door behind him and relegating his inferior to the front seat beside the cabbie.

Even later, once he was safely ensconced in the privacy of the sleek black limousine, the steely gray man occupying the lavish rear seat maintained his aura of silent aloofness, breaking it only once to lean forward and inquire whether there had been any change in the Pontiff's condition.

"I'm afraid not," the Italian responded sadly. "He remains comatose, his condition is very grave."

"I see," said Quillans, settling back into the deep soft cushions of the rear seat. His voice had conveyed just the right note of concern, but had the other man not been so preoccupied with surviving the chaos of Rome's evening traffic, he might have glanced into the rearview mirror in time to see the incongruous little smile that momentarily twisted the American's lips at this news.

And he might have wondered, just for a second, what sort of man the archbishop from San Francisco really was.

Chapter 7

Sunday June 11th

San Francisco

"They're here!" Leta squealed, letting the heavy black drapes fall back over the window.

She lifted the hem of her long flowing dress above her bare feet and proceeded to take the steps two at a time, bursting into her mother's private office on the second floor without knocking. "They just pulled up outside, mom!" she exclaimed.

Diana looked up from her computer with a slight frown of displeasure. "You want to try that again?" she suggested.

The younger woman sighed deeply, dropping her shoulders, and walked out of the small plush room, closing the door carefully behind her. She then turned and knocked twice, waited a second and gave it one more rap.

"Come in," Diana's voice floated out, strong and musical despite the physical barrier between.

Leta reentered, quietly this time, and waited for her mother to raise her languid, heavily made-up grey eyes from her work.

"Yes?"

"The couple we've been expecting has arrived, Priestess," the red haired beauty said, with only the vaguest trace of petulance in her voice.

"Better," Diana nodded.

Just then they heard the clacking of the gargoyle knocker on the front door downstairs.

"All right, show them into the parlor, then go and inform Alton." Her tone was brisk, strident, all business now. "On your way back retrieve them and escort them up here where I can collect their" - she smiled- "donation."

The brooding exterior of the black Victorian mansion had been malignant enough in the hazy afternoon sunlight, but even that was not sufficient to prepare MJ for the dark atmosphere inside.

Although the glass fronted cabinet full of "graveyard dust" was laughable, she didn't find much amusing in the other paraphernalia of Alton Hawley's trade, in particular the braided leather nine-thonged whip, each tip ending in a metal spike. Nor did she find particularly jocular the highly polished, razor sharp halberd which hung in ominous accessibility on the wall.

Both the human skeleton in its glass-domed case and the two skulls on the mantle appeared to be authentic, and illuminated as they were by strategically placed ultraviolet spotlights, they seemed to glow with an ethereal inner light of their own. The red, flame-shaped light bulbs in the chandelier cast eerie shadows on the blood red carpet and coal black walls, making even the faces of the visitors look ghoulish to each other.

Even if, as Joe had observed, the atmosphere was essentially theatrical in nature, MJ still had to wonder what kind of people would go to such lengths to contrive this sort of ambience, and why.

Before she had time to worry the question further, however, the girl Leta reappeared in the doorway like a noiseless apparition, looking as solemn and mystic as her role demanded. "Follow me," she ordered, moving immediately back through the door so that the couple were forced to jump up in a hurry to catch her.

They found her hovering at the foot of the staircase: As soon as she saw their heads poke out from the parlor she turned wordlessly and began to move up the steps, so gracefully \- with virtually no discernible movement of her head, shoulders, legs or feet - that she gave the appearance of floating.

Leta heard the woman behind her give out a slight gasp, and a self-satisfied smile crept across her face for an instant before it retreated beneath the carefully cultivated layer of mysterious remoteness. _If she knew how many times I've been up and down these blasted stairs perfecting that walk, they wouldn't be so amazed,_ the girl thought.

If the waiting room parlor had been designed to chill the blood, the office of the high priestess was surely meant to heat it back up again.

The wet black walls promised secret pleasures of a moonless night, while the amber glow from two fat beeswax candles - lit but a moment before to replace the more functional but far less seductive light of the fluorescent tubes hidden behind ceiling valances, softly ignited the beautiful blond woman's ivory skin until it seemed to be lit from within.

MJ was finding it difficult to keep from staring at the woman's voluminous bosom - the breasts straining against the thin fabric, bulging behind the tight satin lacings. The taut nipples threatened to pop out from either side of the widely cut, deep V neckline with every breath as Diana invited them to be seated.

Stealing a quick glance at Joe, MJ found his eyes riveted as if hypnotized, his mouth hanging stupidly open. A surge of jealous anger colored Marija's face, and she had a strong urge to kick him in the shin.

As if reading the other woman's mind, Diana tilted back in her office chair and slowly stretched her arms back above her head like a cat waking from a nap, so that the edge of one hard pink nipple did indeed peek out mischievously for a moment.

Joe sat down hard, keeping his hands carefully in his lap to hide the erection that was starting to make a noticeable bulge in his jeans. He forced his eyes to look away, and almost immediately his gaze was caught by the large oil painting on the wall above Diana's head. It depicted a huge white swan mounted in sexual posture upon a crouching, full figured nude. The woman's face wore an odd expression of ecstasy mixed with terror; the swan's long neck was fully extended, head tilted up, black beak gaping open as if it were crowing its triumph to the world.

Joe's organ twitched and strained against his tight Levi's, and he squirmed uncomfortably. It took him a while to realize MJ was speaking, her voice impatient as she repeated his name.

"I'm sorry," he blushed; "what were you saying?"

"They required a donation before we go any further," Marija said, looking at him stonily.

"Oh, oh sure," Joe turned to Diana. "How much?"

"The standard donation for an initial consultation with the Black Pope is one hundred dollars...apiece," the high priestess replied, giving a dismissive little shrug.

"Jacoby and Myers would have been cheaper," Joe kidded the woman as he fished a couple of bills from his wallet.

As if on cue, Leta reappeared at the door almost the moment the money changed hands.

"Leta, will you please escort Joe and his little... _bride_ back down to the parlor, then find out when the Black Pope will be ready to receive them?"

As he followed Marija and Leta back down the stairwell, Joe was relieved to note that his erection was subsiding almost as quickly as it had appeared: for some reason handing over cash always had a debilitating effect on that part of his anatomy.

They'd anticipated being brought before the august presence of Alton Hawley within a minute or two, but as if by design they were kept waiting somewhere closer to twenty in the dark, chilly display room - long enough for the walls to close in on them, the dankness to settle deep into their clothes and skin, and the skeleton and faux-werewolf to begin surreptitious movements in the corners of their eyes.

Marija was beginning to feel as if she'd been trapped inside an ancient tomb replete with former occupants and their artifacts of horror. Gradually their nervous chatter, small talk and attempts at dark humor fell prey to longer and longer silences.

At last Leta reappeared in the doorway, a candle held in both hands just below her chin so that its flickering light illuminated the planes of her face, making it into an evil caricature of itself.

"Please follow me," she said, her voice soft and not unkind. Leta always felt a little sorry for new clients at this phase of the initiation. One woman, a hypertensive claustrophobic, it turned out, had come totally unglued during the twenty minute confinement in the "scare room." They'd had to call the paramedics after all attempts to snap her out of her hysterics had failed.

Once she'd recovered, she was foolish enough to initiate a lawsuit against the church but - Leta smiled now, remembering - the old biddy had suddenly dropped all charges when her hair began to fall out in clumps, and when her teeth started loosening in her gums, she'd changed her name and moved to another state.

_Most people coming here get about what they deserve_ , she'd told herself; _wanting spells to unfairly control others that usually backfire anyway_.

She paused before the massive door to her father's study just long enough to ensure that the already nervous couple received full impact from the eerily illuminated brass replica of Pan, whose horned satyric visage leered down at them from above the doorway. Then she rapped loudly three times on the carven mahogany door panel.

"Enter," boomed a strong masculine voice from within, hollowly amplified by hidden speakers in the upper corners of the narrow hall.

Leta pulled open the door, standing to one side so that Joe and Marija could pass through. Then she closed it with an intentional bang, making the initiates jump in spite of themselves.

This room, though also painted black, was better illuminated than any of the others they'd been taken to. By comparison with the parlor, it might have been almost cheery were it not for the weird diabolic symbols covering the walls, and the awesome presence of the man behind the desk.

Alton B. Hawley was an impressive figure, over six feet four inches tall and a muscular two hundred fifty pounds. His sharp featured face sported a neatly trimmed and distinctly evil-looking beard; his clean shaven skull, encased in a black leather helmet with small ivory horns, was bent studiously over a large leather-bound volume with archaic lettering and drawings on its open pages.

"Be seated," he ordered after a moment, without looking up.

Just when the pair was about to get itchy he raised his head, his small dark eyes glittering as if with some beguiling secret. "Now," he boomed, catching Joe - who was looking around the room - off guard; "what did you wish to see me about?"

Joe turned, and as his blue eyes locked onto Hawley's black ones a force not unlike electricity shot instantly between the pair, binding them, riveting them together. Joe felt a strange floating sensation come over him, and with it a sense of some innate power suddenly blooming into life, a power he'd never before experienced or known he had inside him.

The self-proclaimed priest of Satan jerked back involuntarily, his narrow eyes beginning to widen first with surprise, then wider still with something akin to fear.

The huge man, usually a master of control, wrenched his gaze away from the pull of the blue eyes, turning his attention to the woman. But in her too was something disturbing, something either too close to that power he'd been courting and pretending to all these years- the ultimate evil - or else so far at the other end of the spectrum that she formed a perfect mirror image of his own aspirations, mocking that infinitely small but unbridgeable gap between good and evil in the otherwise closed circle of infinity.

"I, I cannot help you. Please leave, leave at once," he commanded in a cracked voice.

"But you must help us," Joe said in a voice of quiet control. "You've taken our fee."

"I'll return your damned fee!" shouted the Satanist, turning to face the back wall, his burly arms crossed against his chest to stop their shaking.

"I don't want the money, I want your advice. You've made a deal. If you can't help us you must give us someone who can," Joe said reasonably.

"Oh, very well, very well," said Hawley, turning back to his desk, but averting his eyes from the couple. Sweat was beginning to bead up on his forehead beneath the thick leather helmet. He longed to tear it off, but wouldn't lower himself to that degree in front of these... _people_.

Shuffling busily through the papers and artifacts in his top desk drawer, he finally extracted a wrinkled, coffee-stained business card. His broad nostrils flared as he remembered with disgust the fat, sniveling little woman who had come to him last fall seeking training in harmless tricks she could use in her tea room consultations. She'd been accompanied by a tall, austere woman - a local medium of some repute - who was apparently her friend. After he'd successfully reduced the first to tears with his harangue on her hypocrisy and she'd fled the room, the second woman had lingered a moment longer to hand him her card.

"If you ever run into a client in need of _real_ help," she'd smiled, then turned and quickly left to catch up with her blubbering companion.

It was this card he now handed to Joe, still avoiding eye contact and withdrawing his hand before their flesh could touch.

"This is a renowned medium," he said as Joe turned the card over, inspecting it. "Perhaps she can be of assistance."

He pressed a white button on his desk and a bell was heard ringing in the outer hall. Within seconds Leta appeared.

"Please escort our guests out," Hawley said wearily, looking only at his daughter. "Have Diana refund their donation before they go."

"That won't be necessary," Joe began, but the big man cut him off with an upraised palm.

"Take it and go," he ordered hoarsely. "Then I owe you nothing. And don't come back."

They sat in silence outside the black manse, Marija waiting for Joe to start the car, or the conversation. He seemed to be off somewhere, staring at the house they had just exited with a somber, unblinking gaze.

She finally had to break the silence: " _What_ , Joe, what is it?"

"I don't know," he answered, his voice slow, weighted by thought; "I felt - I _feel_ \- strange, like something happened in there but I don't know what it was."

He turned to face her, and as their eyes met she felt a small electric shock. "Did you feel anything...strange, anything at all, when we were talking to that man?"

She caught her breath, looked away. "Kind of," she admitted. "He seemed scared," she added after a moment.

"Yeah, but it was more than that," Joe said, glancing up at the house. "It was like a kind of recognition, like he knew me from somewhere. And then, all of a sudden, I felt like I knew me too. Weird, huh? I don't know what that means."

Marija met this in silence. Whatever she'd felt, she didn't want to know any more about it, didn't want to know what it was. There'd been way too much of this kind of discovery lately.

"Can we go home now, Joe?" she asked quietly.

After a few minutes of driving, however, it became clear that they were not heading in the direction of the rectory.

"Joe?"

"I thought we'd stop by and see the medium he recommended, just for a minute."

Marija started to protest, not really up for any more encounters, but she didn't want to argue either, so she looked out the window instead.

"Tired?" Joe inquired with a glance in her direction.

"A little."

"Don't worry, we won't be there long; I just want to check this broad out while we're nearby, see if she might offer any new possibilities for us." He turned to give her a grin, and MJ noticed a certain glint in his eyes that hadn't been there before, a new undercurrent of strength. In some strange way, she thought, he actually seemed to be enjoying this now. She didn't know if that pissed her off, or was a relief.

"Shouldn't we call first, Joe?"

"We're almost there; if she's out or busy, we'll just come back another time."

About a half block past Clement Street he slowed and began scouting the houses and curbs for their street addresses, finally pulling up in front of an older, Mediterranean style stucco, clone of every other house on the street, which differed only in their individual shades of peeling pastel. This one was a faded rose hue.

"Wait here a minute," he ordered, jumping from the car. "I'll be right back."

She watched in mild fascination the spring to his step, the confidence in his bearing as he strode up the cement walk towards the front of the house. What had happened in there between him and Hawley to cause such a visible difference in his character?

As she looked on from the car, the front door opened a few inches, still held from within by a heavy brass safety chain. A tall dark-haired woman, her features mostly hidden in the shadows, appeared behind it. Joe pulled out the business card from his pocket and handed it to her, talking with animated gestures. He waved in the direction of the car, partially turning toward Marija who resisted the impulse to either cringe beneath the door window or wave back. The medium opened the entry a little wider and poked her head through the crack to peer at MJ appraisingly, then gave a brief nod. Joe ran back to the passenger side of the car.

"Come on," he said, opening the door and grasping MJ lightly beneath the elbow to help her out.

"What'd you tell her?" she whispered as she clambered awkwardly from the low slung vehicle, ducking to avoid banging her bandaged head on the frame.

"Not much, just that Hawley had recommended her and we wanted to talk for a few minutes."

MJ shrugged and followed him up the cracked cement pathway, stepping carefully over the tufts of grass and dandelions that filled its broken gaps. As they arrived at the front stoop the door swung open and a husky voice from the shadows bade them enter.

The medium looked ordinary enough. She was a tall, gaunt, somewhat masculine woman clad in old blue jeans and a faded cotton shirt. She could have been considered homely, but she carried herself too well for that. Her thick black waist length hair, streaked with silver about the temples, was drawn back into a low pony tail tied with a narrow blue satin ribbon the color of her jeans.

"I've just made a fresh pot of coffee: will you join me?" she offered, showing them into her comfortable - and very ordinary - living room.

"I'd love a cup," Marija smiled gratefully. Joe nodded affirmation.

"Just sit anywhere," the woman invited. "Nothing's precious. I'll be back in a jif."

The man and woman lowered themselves gingerly onto the floral print sofa, then both sank back with a whoosh of relief, instantly comfortable and at ease. They looked at each other and smiled. The late afternoon sun slipping through the half-open slats of the venetian blinds made shimmering golden shafts of light that reflected from the dust motes in the air and warmed their faces and their hopes.

"Oh dear," exclaimed their hostess as she returned with a tray. "That sun is right in your eyes! Would you like me to close the blinds?"

"No!" both cried out simultaneously, then looked at each other and laughed. "I'm sorry," Marija apologized; "It's just so nice to be in some light again."

"After Hawley's tomb?" the spiritualist grimaced. "I know exactly what you mean."

She served them coffee and thin slices of homemade banana bread, and for a few minutes they nibbled and sipped, discussing nothing more threatening than the weather and baseball.

It was Marija who finally broached the subject of their visit, not so much from any desire to talk about it, but from a concern that they were beginning to take up too much of this pleasant woman's time.

"I'm not sure what Joe told you about the problems I've been having lately," she began.

"Nothing really," the medium smiled, looking at her with a disconcerting directness.

"I, I'm not sure what a medium can do to help me," MJ continued with a nervous laugh; "but we do seem to be running out of alternatives." She looked over at Joe, her eyes asking for help, and together they proceeded to tell the occultist all the things that had happened to Marija over the past twelve days.

They related the first incident, when during an attempt at astral projection MJ'd suddenly found herself drawn into the center of the universe at a terrifying speed, and then into some other dimension outside this one; and how at first it seemed full of soft radiant lights and innocent angelic beings, but then suddenly everything changed. The light darkened, the angelic beings becoming distorted twisted shapes, their faces turning into ugly demonic countenances howling in wrath. Then, from the midst of the black void there materialized a huge dragon-like intelligence who called to her by name. He touched her, caressed her with a ruby claw, whispered secret things she couldn't quite understand, told her she was meant to join him, to become his queen and reign with him in hell.

As MJ talked the other woman's face began to harden, her expression less open and friendly than it had been earlier, the homeliness underneath now exposed in stern scowl lines and down-turned mouth. The bright turquoise eyes faded to a distant cloudy grey, lips thinned into an uncompromising line.

Sensing they were losing the medium's support, Marija began to talk even more quickly, describing the next encounter, when the dragon had appeared in her television set a couple of nights later, sending her screaming to the Catholic church and to the priest Muldoon; and then two days further on, in the midst of making oatmeal cookies, how an earthquake like rumbling shook her apartment, and her floor opened up like the gates of hell, a flood of cockroaches pouring out in a thick carpet, crawling over everything, up the walls, across the ceiling, dropping down onto her neck, scrabbling up her legs and through her hair and into her eyes, and underneath it all the laughter, the dragon's voice calling, calling.

She kept adding more and more details in an attempt to convince the woman, although why or of what she couldn't have said. At last she gave up, sensing each word was only making the rift between them deeper. She leaned back against the cushions, hands folded primly in her lap, waiting for sentence to be pronounced.

Joe had wisely stopped talking some time before.

"I'm afraid I can be of no use to you," the spiritualist stated flatly.

"But why?" Marija protested.

"A séance under these circumstances - assuming even part of what you've told me is true - could be extremely dangerous. You have _no idea_ what you're asking," she admonished, shaking her head angrily. "Even contact with relatively benign spirits is an enormous drain on me psychically as well as physically, and it always contains a certain element of risk. But an attempt to contact spiritual entities of the magnitude of evil you've described could be truly deadly. I wouldn't even consider it," she shook her head again, her face grim.

"Then what am I to do? How can I communicate with these things so they will **leave me alone**?!" she cried.

"My advice is that you forget about it, do not pursue this matter any further at all!"

"You don't get it! It is they who are pursuing me!" Marija screamed, bursting into tears. "I just want them to stop!"

"Marija," Joe broke in, putting a calming hand on her shoulder; "go on back to the car. I'll be out in a minute."

"But..."

"It's all right, go on. I just want a word with Ms. Salvida...it won't take long," he coaxed, guiding her to the door.

In less than five minutes the front door reopened and as Joe stepped out into the twilight MJ noticed him slipping something into his shirt pocket. He was grinning again as he came down the walk.

"What was that?" she pointed at his pocket as he climbed into the driver's seat.

"The name of another medium she thinks might be willing to help," Joe replied.

"But she was so adamant, so completely against it," Marija exclaimed. "How did you ever...?"

"Trade secret of the used car salesman," he chuckled, preening his invisible mustache smugly. "You willing to give it one more try?"

"Yeah, what have I got to lose," MJ shrugged. "But not tonight, okay?"

Madame Salvida watched the pair from her window, fiddling with the pendant around her neck worriedly. She'd have to give Mildred a call, let her know about these two. Her friend was a total fraud - "Tea Room Hypocrite" Hawley had called her - but at least she could put on a pretty good show. Maybe that would be enough to satisfy these two. Who knew, it might even help, as the man had just suggested. If the woman could be convinced that she had communicated with and banished the dark forces that tormented her, her fear might also dissipate, and with that gone the evil spirits might have less power over her, might even tire of the game and leave the poor girl alone completely.

She sighed, turning away from the window as the red sports car pulled away from the curb. That was an awful lot of _mights._ As she reached for the phone, the other side of the equation - the side she didn't want to look at - reached out to slap her face. _Then again, a phony séance might just serve to anger the demons further, and if it does...._

***

About the same time Joe and Marija were entering a little Italian restaurant downtown for a quiet meal prior to returning to the rectory, Mike Muldoon was fiddling with his plate of Irish stew, mixing it about with his fork, trying a bite now and then but mostly leaving it untouched.

Mrs. McGilvroy scowled at him from across the kitchen, arms folded across her ample waist.

"Sorry Mrs. M," he apologized, getting up from the table at last. "I just don't seem to have much appetite tonight."

"Worry'll do that to a man," the housekeeper noted, picking up the plate.

He'd waited until after seven to dine, hoping Marija would be back to join him, before finally giving in to Mrs. McGilvroy's nagging about the potatoes getting soggy and carrots overcooked. Now it was past seven thirty and still no sign of his guest. He could only pray everything was all right.

The priest retreated moodily to his study, taking with him a clean water glass which he promptly filled with neat bourbon, the scotch having been finished off the night before.

"What am I gonna do?" he sighed, running his fingers back through the soft black mat of his hair. "What-am-I-going-to-do?"

Contrary to his earlier assurances to Joe, he knew deep in his heart that Marija's exorcism was never going to be approved. The church, for all its belief in a higher spiritual power for good, had inexplicably turned a blind eye to the manifestations of that opposing force for evil. Somehow, in the Vatican's attempt to achieve a "modernized", politically and socially correct stance, they'd decided that although God still exists, Satan is now merely the offspring of human corruption and psychosis, a non-entity.

He shook his head in dismay, knowing that he was going to have to tell her - tell them both - the truth without any more procrastination. And with that decision came the certainty that he would still help the woman one way or another, regardless of the consequences.

"I'm going to save her, with or without official sanction," he said aloud, slamming his palm down flat against the desktop. "Because I have to, because she was... she was _sent_ to me to intervene!"

And as this truth hit him, he intuitively knew that more was involved, much more. Like the bud of a rose or the first line of an epic poem, this was just the beginning.

It was nearly nine before Joe and Marija arrived back at the rectory. The woman entered first, looking a little sheepish and uncertain of her welcome. Mike took care of that in short order, hugging her in relief, while heartily shaking Joe's hand.

"How about a nightcap?" he suggested, leading them towards his study. "It's not quite as comfortable as the living room," he apologized as they settled onto the hard little office chairs and he poured their drinks - bourbon for Joe and a half glass of wine for Marija. "But it is a lot more private."

Joe and MJ shot each other a look at that last.

As it turned out, they took the news about the exorcism better than he'd expected, although he did notice certain glances passing between the two as he spoke that implied they had some secrets of their own to share.

When he got to the part about Marija being sent to him for help, and his determination to see this through, there were tears in the woman's eyes and even Joe was smiling. But when they then confided in him what they'd been up to that day he found his own smile fading rapidly.

"I can understand your eagerness to get something done about this situation as soon as possible," he said; "and I know I haven't been much help thus far..."

"Oh but you have," Marija protested.

"It's not your fault about the exorcism," Joe chimed in. "You gave it your best shot, and we do appreciate all you've done, but..."

"But I haven't come through with the goods," Mike finished for him, smiling to lighten the words. "I know. Listen, I can't tell you not to try other things, but I'd just like to ask you one favor: Take me along next time, okay? Maybe, well...if something should go awry I think I should be there. I don't know how 'divine' I am, but I think I might have a little pull with some higher powers upstairs who could help in a tight situation. And I know a couple of effective prayers I could throw in for good measure," he grinned disarmingly.

Later that night, after Joe had left and Marija was tucked safely into bed, Mike came to one more decision. If the church would not provide an exorcism for the woman soon, he would, _one way or another._

He knew there must be literature on those arcane rites available somewhere besides via the Catholic Church. He'd read enough on the subject during his seminary days to discover that the Catholics had only adopted the rites from earlier occult practices, not invented them.

Of course, the church hierarchy considered exorcism a sanctified ritual only when confined to its practice within the religion. Outside their official sanction it became heresy, a sacrilege of the first magnitude. If he were to go ahead without their okay, they might not only terminate his position as a priest, but as a practicing Catholic as well: _Excommunication._ The very word brought an inadvertent shudder.

"So. That's it then," he blew out his breath, dismissing the concern with forced indifference. He climbed onto his uncomfortable little cot. "They're leaving me with so few options, I've at least got to be prepared to go ahead with it for Marija's sake, if nothing else will save her. I just hope I never have to make that choice."

With that final thought - or prayer - he turned out the lights and looked for sleep.

Chapter 8

Monday June 12th

Rome

If Archbishop Luigi Magliano was less than thrilled with his new assignment for the Vatican, he had at least done his best to put ego aside and accept it with as much grace as he could muster under the circumstances, willing himself to remain the humble servant of the Lord, even when his fiery Italian temper itched to rebel at certain affronts to his dignity. Like last night.

"I wonder what makes our eminent visitor from San Francisco so sure of his own importance that he can justify such rudeness to a fellow servant of God?" he muttered aloud, recalling with renewed displeasure the American's snobbish manners the previous night.

Cautiously sliding the nose of the sleek black limousine out into the midmorning traffic that whirred past the northern corner of Vatican City, the portly Italian emissary noted out of the corner of his eye the crowds of dowdy housewives and tired old men, ragged indigents and camera-laden tourists moving like a slow herd through the city gates. In particular, he scowled at the hoards of media people gathering in anxious, pushy, ever-increasing numbers in the Piazza di San Pietro as news of the Pope's illness spread.

"Like a flock of vultures," he thought, "waiting for word of Il Papa's death. And what will they do when it is announced, burst into tears and lamentations? No, they will pull out their fancy cameras and phones, to capture tears on the faces of the mourners around them as they frantically call the news into their wire services in a mad race to scoop each other. That will be the only thing on their minds!"

Shaking his large head sadly, he withdrew a well-worn strand of carved ivory rosary beads from his jacket pocket and began mumbling the rote prayers.

Archbishop Magliano's sudden recall three days earlier from the comfortable and prestigious position of Nuncio to Madrid had come as an unexpected shock. Though he'd been told it had to do with the Holy Father's illness, he could not help but feel a certain disappointment at the abrupt curtailment of all his plans and projects, his loss of stature there in Madrid.

Of course he'd accepted the orders without question, willing as always to do whatever was asked of him, go wherever he was needed, even - he supposed - if it meant playing lackey to a pompous fool like Archbishop Quillans. He began stroking the beads with more passion as he felt the anger blossom inside him again, praying vigorously against this disturbing persistent fault in himself.

While one hand continued to work its way through the succession of beads, the other guided the big car expertly through Rome's morning traffic, the muttered prayers only occasionally interrupted by a mild expletive in response to some other driver's foolhardy moves. Soon he was heading west out of the city proper and toward the suburban municipality of Fumicino, home of Rome's international airport just inland from the sunwashed golden beaches of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

There had been no need for him to carry an identifying snapshot of today's arrival: Patriarch Synarus of Alexandria, head of the Eastern Sees, was a frequent visitor to the Vatican - well known not just to the Roman Curia but to the Italian media as well - ever since the ancient schism between the two main bodies of Catholicism had been resolved the previous year.

That tall imposing figure with his hawk-like nose, piercing black eyes and full gray beard would be recognized instantly, and trying to conceal the fact of his arrival in Rome would only arouse undue suspicion from the news people. So today, at least, Luigi was spared the elaborate and discomfiting precautions of the night before.

"Today," he smiled, beginning to whistle the opening bars of a popular operetta, his native cheerfulness returning under the bright blue skies and rolling green fields of his beloved countryside; "if I must play chauffeur, at least I may do so with a certain degree of respectability and grace."

Magliano was by no means a dull witted man. On the contrary, the keen probing mind beneath his placid countenance was the source of his greatest trials as a priest, the continuing difficulties he experienced in accepting the rules and decrees of the church hierarchy without question or criticism. He always found himself wanting to dig, to examine, to understand - rather than to simply accept their mandates on faith, as products of divine guidance, as a good Catholic should.

None-the-less the depth of his love and devotion to God and to Christ, acquired as a street child growing up under the shadow of the Vatican - which had symbolized that God to him - more than made up for this inherent intellectual flaw.

He had worked as hard as any man could to overcome this upsetting human frailty. If he hadn't succeeded entirely, he had at least learned to suppress it well, learned to outwardly accept all his orders and assignments with such unquestioning faith, such convincing enthusiasm, that he had rapidly earned a somewhat gilded reputation for obedience and fervor. It was this as much as anything which had elevated him from simple parish priest to Archbishop and official representative of the Pope in Spain by the relatively young age of 45.

Today, however, the old battle raged within again: events of the past few days had been so curious, the reasons behind them so oblique, that the unasked _whys_ burned in his mind like a fever.

Why had the Archbishop from San Francisco been called to Rome so hurriedly, without so much as a single aide, and under such a blanket of secrecy? Why was the powerful Eastern Patriarch sent for with equal haste, and again no entourage? Why had he himself been recalled from Madrid with no replacement, no time to set affairs in order, told to speak to no one about this new assignment, and then told so little about it himself that he couldn't have sunk any ships if he'd wanted to?

Then early this morning, as he was leaving the Cardinal Secretary's office suite, he'd chanced to look down through the glass wall of the second story hallway into the small enclosed piazza off the main entry just as two of the Cardinal Bishops from the suburban sees were arriving. In addition to their usual briefcases of church business, both carried large overnight bags as well. Curious indeed!

"Stop it!" he ordered himself sternly as he pulled into the reserved parking zone in front of the airline terminal. "Whatever you need to know you will be told, no more, no less. Where is your faith?"

In the short time it took him to lock the car, argue with a parking attendant and a taxi driver about his right to use the space, and cover the forty feet to the entrance in his short, swinging gait he was already perspiring profusely. He entered the cool sanctuary of the air-conditioned building gratefully, mopping his brow with a large white handkerchief.

According to the electronic airline schedule on the lobby wall, the flight from Cairo would be only 45 minutes late - not too bad for an Egyptian airline. A few minutes after the plane's arrival was finally announced, the Patriarch - dressed in the flowing robes of his office - was hustled through customs with a minimum of apologetic, cursory inspections.

Magliano came forward to introduce himself, but though Cardinal Synarus had met him on only one previous occasion the impressive religious leader recognized the Italian Archbishop immediately, even in street clothes, and dropping his luggage hurried towards the smaller man with outstretched arms, a warm friendly smile creasing his austere face.

They embraced, kissing hear other on either cheek in the European fashion. It was such a contrast to the cool snub he'd received the night before that tears of gratitude sprang momentarily to Luigi's eyes. He stepped back and bowed his forehead to the Cardinal's ring with humble admiration and respect. "Your eminence," he said hoarsely.

Suddenly the two men were separated by a silvery sphere at the end of a slender black rod, rudely thrust between their faces by a small shite hand, the long tapered fingers tipped in bright red enamel.

They turned as one to the heavily made up face of an otherwise pretty young woman, who flashed a smile at them as she switched on her hand held cassette recorder.

"Cardinal Synarus?" she began, with a slight hesitation. Magliano was about to take advantage of her uncertainty when the Patriarch smiled, answering ingenuously: "Yes my child?"

"DiGuccione from _Il Messaggero_ ," she identified herself, clumsily flashing her press card with one hand while attempting to juggle the tape recorder and microphone with the other. "I was given a tip," she stopped and blushed at the artless term, promptly correcting herself, " _information,_ that is, that you were en route to the Vatican. Does this concern the death of the Pope?"

Shock registered on the bearded Patriarch's face. His skin paled beneath the swarthy tan. "Death?" he repeated numbly, his voice a rough whisper. "You mean he is...gone?"

"Oh! Oh, _no_ , your Eminence..." she stammered; "at least not that I'm aware of."

She was blushing furiously now, and almost dropped the recorder. Under all that makeup she looked like a foolish little girl. "I'm so very sorry for my, my poor choice of words," she apologized, near tears.

Magliano noted the small gold crucifix peeking out from behind the open collar of her blouse, the tailored wool suit that, like his, was too hot for the season, and he found himself in sympathy for her despite his aversion to pushy reporters. Obviously she was new to this game.

"I only meant to say, are you here because Il Papa's death seems imminent?" She was straining bravely to regain some semblance of professional composure, determined to see this interview through.

"In the face of eternity, death is imminent for us all," the eastern holy man stated, seeming to enjoy being enigmatic for the press. "As for the Pontiff, the time of his death, like ours, is in the hands of God."

"I'm afraid we have no further comment at this time," interposed the Italian Archbishop, gently taking charge as he picked up the suitcases and began to move the Cardinal Bishop away.

"And who are _you_?" the reporter asked pertly, giving a sly once over to his rumpled ill-fitting suit, his unimpressive stature. She shoved the obnoxious mike under Magliano's oversized mustache.

"Why this is Archbishop Magliano, Nuncio to Spain," Cardinal Synarus answered with innocent pride in his fellow Bishop.

"Oh!" said DiGuccione with renewed interest, and embarrassment.

_He should have been briefed,_ Magliano thought in exasperation, turning his head so that Synarus wouldn't see him roll his eyes. Aloud he simply repeated, "No further comment," hurrying the Patriarch away before the reporter could regain her composure and voice.

On the way back into the city, the unassuming head of the Eastern Churches chose to forgo the comforts of the expansive rear section - "You can't see anything from back there" - and joined Magliano in comradely discomfort in the front, chatting animatedly the whole way home.

From their conversation it appeared he was as much in mystery about the strange and urgent summons that had brought him to the Holy See as was the little Italian, who could provide few answers to the visitor's multitude of questions.

Magliano perceived, beneath the intelligence, wit and curiosity of the Cardinal Bishop, a pervasive, childlike simplicity, a naiveté that was foremost in his character. In that sense he was the Italian's polar opposite, with all the unrestrained qualities of grace Luigi found so lacking in his self. He had the feeling the holy man could have received any answer to his questions, no matter how shocking or unorthodox, and come through with his faith unshaken.

Because of these qualities, Magliano wished he were able to confide in Synarus his concerns regarding the American Archbishop, the man's disturbing qualities. The Patriarch would undoubtedly have said something upbeat and reassuring, making Luigi more comfortable about the visitor. But he kept his mouth shut, his doubts hidden. He had sworn to the Papal Secretary his complete silence on the subject of Quillan's visit, and until that esteemed Cardinal, second in command to the Pope, relieved him of this promise, he had to bear the burden of his uncertainty alone. For reasons he could not name, the very thought of the American filled him with foreboding.

While Archbishop Magliano and Cardinal Synarus were en route from the airport, Archbishop Robert F. Quillans was pacing the small, richly furnished apartment in which he'd been sequestered within the Vatican Palace, a virtual prisoner.

Instructions had arrived in a sealed envelope on his breakfast tray that morning, requesting that he remain in his quarters until his personal steward returned from the airport with further information. The memo was on letterhead engraved in gold leaf: "From the Office of the Secretary of State, Vatican City," and had been signed by Cardinal Bishop Mendice himself. Quillans guessed that made the request official.

He was annoyed by the restrictions, but not really perturbed. Things were moving along as they were supposed to, the game being played out on cue. Still there was this native restlessness, this impatient nature he had to hold in check, a nature which railed against the enforced realities of time and place and protocol which had to be observed for the guise to work. He ached for the power soon to be his, hating every delay. But it wasn't wise to mess with the plan.

So he paced the little room to release some of the nervous energy snarling within his unquiet soul, determined to let events take their predetermined course as he knew they must.

It was after 1 pm when a light rap at the door broke the silence. Quillans had been staring out his third story window at the crowds gathered in the great circular plaza below, imagining how these throngs of the faithful would react to the momentous changes destined to take place shortly. The knocking jolted him back from his speculations before he'd followed them to conclusion.

"Enter," he called out. The door opened to reveal his portly chauffeur from the night before.

"Your Excellency," the Italian said with a little bow; "you are well, I trust?"

"Well as could be expected," Quillans said curtly. "You are, I presume, my long-awaited 'personal steward'?" The quotation marks hung in the air.

_The man's aptitude for discourtesy is truly amazing_ , thought Luigi. "Yes, I am your 'personal steward,' Archbishop," he replied in kind; "as part of a _temporary_ assignment at the Holy See."

"And what, may I ask, is your usual function?"

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to say," the Italian answered coolly, wishing that he could so that the other man would be appropriately chagrined. Instead he asked politely: "Have you had lunch?"

"They brought me something a while ago. I hadn't much appetite for it."

_We'll see how you feel about that when you discover that dinner isn't served around here until after eight,_ the Nuncio thought with a certain satisfaction. Aloud he said, "In that case, I am instructed to take you at once for a personal audience with the Papal Secretary...if you are ready?"

He extended a hand toward the door.

As they walked together down the long, ornately decorated hall, the silence between them grew burdensome to Magliano. He began speaking to fill it, but kept his voice low and confidential, lest someone lurking in the shadows overhear.

"As I'm sure you are aware, Excellency," he said, your true identity is, for the present, a fact known only to myself and the Secretary. My instructions are to serve as your personal escort and liaison wherever you might wish to venture within the Vatican City grounds. His Eminence has asked me to convey his apologies for any discomfort or inconvenience this may cause you."

They were descending a curved, inner stairwell now, their footsteps echoing in the narrow vaulted chamber. The legate lowered his voice even further.

"If I am compelled to introduce you to anyone, it will be as Robert Blake, a reporter for the American Catholic Journal." Magliano looked over his shoulder into the cool, impassive face of the San Franciscan, who waved a hand dismissively. _Whatever._

Luigi's mood blackened. Turning away, he led the man the rest of their short journey without another word.

They moved through a twisting maze of hallways on the second floor, finally stopping before a nondescript door at the rear of the palace apartment complex. His knock was answered within seconds by a small slender man with a silvery fluff of hair ringing his bald pate.

"Your Eminence," the Italian Archbishop said, bending his forehead to the sapphire ring. "I have delivered your guest."

The transformation in the other Archbishop's demeanor now that he was in the august presence of the Cardinal Secretary of State was as complete as it was - to Magliano - contrived.

Quillans was the essence of charm, humbly respectful, exuding warmth and kindliness and perfect manners. Luigi wanted to spit. But a moment later he was delivered satisfaction.

"Archbishop Quillans, may I introduce you to the man who has most graciously agreed to act as your personal steward during your stay here," said the diminutive head of state. "The Most Reverend Archbishop Luigi Magliano, just returned from his position as Nuncio to Spain in order to help us in this delicate matter."

Color flooded the American's face. "I had no idea," he murmured, taking the proffered hand.

"Obviously," the other man smiled, nodding graciously.

"As you know from the Fax I sent you, Archbishop Quillans," the Secretary went on, innocent of the tension between the two men; "you are here at the personal behest of Pope Marcus. It was his specific instruction that your visit be conducted in absolute secrecy."

He seated himself gingerly on an uncomfortable wooden chair, wrapping his robes carefully across his lap and indicating that the two Archbishops be seated as well. "The Holy Father also requested that certain members of the Sacred College be likewise sequestered in the palace: These men have arrived this morning and will remain here until..." at this point he threw his hands in the air with typical Italian dramatic flair. "I'm really not certain what his Holiness has in mind for us all from this point. I shall have to let you make your own judgment after dinner tonight. I intend to play a recording of the Pontiff's last message, the one that has brought you all under this roof today, in hopes that we - with the help of the Heavenly Father - may be able to reach an inspired consensus. In the meantime we wait, I'm afraid.," he concluded, smiling gently.

A hand raised, shoulder high, like a schoolboy requesting permission to speak. At the Cardinal Bishop's nod, the American asked with stilted courtesy: "Was Archbishop Mangini here..."

"Magliano," corrected the Italian politely.

"Pardon me... _Magliano_ ," Robert Quillans amended with feigned contrition. Then, turning back to the Secretary of State, he continued: "Was my esteemed colleague here also specifically requested by the Pontiff?"

If the gentle little Cardinal noticed the undercurrent between the two Archbishops, he gave no sign. "No, it was my own decision to recall Archbishop Magliano to help me in this task," the Secretary admitted. "I needed someone with the necessary experience, dedication and familiarity with the workings of the Vatican to act as courier and emissary for the six Cardinal Bishops of Rome, so that vital church business in their Suburban Sees might continue in their absence. We also needed a man of utmost discretion and diplomacy to carry out our little ruse at the airport, as well as serve the needs of our guests once they'd arrived. I could think of no man suited to fit the task so well as he," Mendice turned to beam at Magliano.

"I see," responded the San Franciscan thoughtfully, rubbing his jaw.

"As I mentioned, we shall be having a private supper this evening in my apartment suite," the statesman concluded, edging out of his chair. Then noting the questioning glance of the taller man he laughed, a light little chuckle: "No, not here, this is merely a spare bedroom I borrowed for this meeting, in keeping with our temporary need for security."

It occurred to Magliano that the Cardinal was actually enjoying all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, despite his profuse apologies to the contrary.

"Your Eminence?" It was Quillans again. "Is it necessary for me to remain in my quarters, now that I've been briefed?"

"Oh, not at all, not at all," Cardinal Mendice assured him. "Archbishop Magliano is at your service the rest of the day. He can give you a first-class guided tour of our city, if you like. He has, I presume, briefed you on your assumed identity?"

"Yes your Eminence."

"Excellent," smiled the secretary, rising now from the chair and extending his hand for the customary reverence. "Do enjoy your tour, Archbishop...It _is_ your first visit here, is it not?"

Quillans nodded.

"Then there is much to see; don't let me keep you any longer."

***

Cardinal Bishop Mendice's suite was more like a small gothic manor than an apartment. It was set apart from the other rooms of the palace, and though slightly newer than the main building, it reflected the same aura of opulence that had flourished during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the palace and basilica were constructed. Mosaic tiles adorned the floors and arches, heavy baroque gilt tapestries hung from the paneled walls, richly colored oriental carpets covered most of the open floor space, and immense brass and crystal chandeliers hung from the ceilings. These latter filled the rooms with a softly patterned light, like pale sun through leaves. It was through this light that the nine somber guests of the papal secretary now moved in slow procession from the dining chamber to the main living area.

Archbishop Quillans, the only stranger in the group, had been introduced to the others during the quiet supper, but his presence in that ennobled group had not been explained to the seven old ecclesiastics in their red silk mantellettas, except for an enigmatic assurance by their host that the forthcoming tape would clarify the reasons for Quillans' presence there.

Now, as during dinner, the head of the San Francisco archdiocese carefully, if surreptitiously, studied the six Italian Cardinals from the Suburban Sees of Rome.

An aide quietly moved about the room serving crystal snifters of brandy to the elderly Cardinals who stood near their chairs, ignoring the discomfort of old muscles and arthritic joints out of respect for the Papal Secretary as they awaited his return to the room with the tape recorder.

All but one of these top church officials were above 65, and three appeared to be close to the end of their active careers in the College of Cardinals, nearing the 80 year mark, after which they would no longer be allowed to vote on church matters.

Quillans had studied these eldest three first, deciding quickly that they were so nearly identical in physical appearance and mannerisms - eight decades of sharing similar times, beliefs and rituals - that to know one was pretty much to know them all. They were undoubtedly intelligent men, and once quite dynamic, but now there was a certain fuzziness of intellect and purpose about them. An old man's weariness had settled in about each one, worn over their slumped shoulders like the red capes of their office. They shared a tendency to avoid looking at anything too closely, thereby avoiding tiresome controversy, confrontation or conflict. Mostly they just wanted to rest now. They would not be dangerous, not at all, he concluded, mentally dismissing them.

The next target of his scrutiny was the Patriarch of Alexandria. As head of the Reunified Eastern Churches, he could carry a great deal of weight and deserved particularly intense study. Quillans had already devoted much of his time during dinner to feeling out this man's character, and his final resolution was pretty much the same as Archbishop Magliano had intuited about the man during their drive back from the airport that morning: Cardinal Synarus, though vital in mind and spirit, was trusting to a fault in the Doctrine of Divine Guidance. He would offer no objection to anything the Pope decreed, even if it were orders to blow up the Vatican and torch all the pilgrims in St. Peter's square.

He cast a final glance toward the corner where Synarus and Magliano stood chatting, and caught a thoughtful glance from the latter. Casually he averted his gaze, pretending to admire the tapestries that covered the cool stone walls. His fists, hidden in his jacket pockets, clenched in secret ire.

Magliano was too shrewd, too much of a rebel for all his seeming deference. Quillans read him well: He could be very dangerous indeed, were it not for the fact that as an Archbishop he would be powerless to influence the decisions of the Sacred College of Cardinals. He would not be allowed into the secret consistory nor the special elective conclave, thus he could do no real harm. _Let him worry and suspect to his heart's content,_ Quillans smiled, accepting a brandy from the aide with a little nod; _he's helpless to stop me_.

That left the three remaining Cardinal Bishops for him to consider: Cardinal Bertini, Bishop of Frascati and Camerlingo of the Holy Roman Church; Cardinal Mertinello of Porto and Santa Rufina, the sub-dean of the College of Cardinals; and Cardinal Falliano of Ostia, the all-important dean of the College. He turned towards them now, but before he had a chance to pursue his examination of the trio the Papal Secretary reentered the room with the much anticipated tape. The murmur of conversation ceased instantly, all heads turning to follow the little man across the room.

"Please, be seated," Mendice invited, indicating the arc of chairs which had been placed in a semicircle around the unlit fireplace He sat primly on the raised stone structure in front of them, tucking his long red mantelletta beneath him.

For a long moment he fiddled in silence with the portable cassette player - testing, playing it fast forward, testing again, then reversing slightly until he had the tape cued to his satisfaction. His bright blue eyes looked up, twinkling mischievously at the breathless anticipation in the faces surrounding him.

"I see we are all quite ready."

Then they grew solemn again, remembering what occasioned this moment, this tape. "If you will bear with me a minute longer, I believe a brief explanation as to how I came to make this recording is necessary before I play it for you."

Quillans leaned forward, his expression perhaps a shade more intense than that of the others in the room.

"As you know," Cardinal Mendice began; "Pope Marcus was stricken with a massive cerebral hemorrhage shortly after dinner Friday night. He had dined alone that evening, complaining of feeling unwell, so when he collapsed his personal servant immediately summoned me."

"His Holiness had lapsed into a stupor by the time I got there, so I sent the steward to summon his personal physician. While I awaited the doctor's arrival, the Holy Father came back to himself momentarily - struggling to stay conscious - and beseeched me to fetch his cassette recorder, the one he keeps on his bedside table to record inspirations that come to him in dreams."

"At his instructions, I removed the old tape from the recorder and inserted a fresh cartridge. When he saw that this was done he somehow raised himself painfully to his elbows - an effort the attending physician was later to say was nothing short of miraculous, considering the extent of brain damage His Holiness had suffered - and began to speak in a surprisingly strong voice."

The little Cardinal paused for a moment, a slight frown knitting his normally placid brow. "His voice took on a strange quality. You will notice it, I'm sure. I mention it only to assure you that it is not a fault of the equipment; the reproduction is accurate. His voice is exactly as I heard it that night." He sighed heavily for no apparent reason, giving his earlobe a distracted tug.

"As for the rest of it - the reason the Pope is being cared for at the palace infirmary instead of the Hospital General, the reason you have all been called away from your normal realms of duty in the dead of night - as it were -and sequestered here for an indeterminate period, and what effect these ongoing events may have on the future of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church - these you may discern for yourselves from the Pope's own words. I am merely the messenger for His Holiness, faithfully carrying out his last orders, which are what you will hear now."

With that last dramatic verbal flourish, Mendice pushed the play button and the voice of Pope Marcus filled the hushed silence.

"This is Pope Marcus the Third, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Servant of the Servants of God." The dying Pontiff's words had begun as a weak, halting rasp, but rapidly increased in strength and volume until they were loud enough to be heard easily by everyone in the room. Yet the voice was strangely lacking in resonance, as flat and two-dimensional as the thin magnetic tape on which it had been recorded.

"Present with me now, as my witness and faithful servant in whom I hereby entrust the responsibility for carrying out the divine orders which I am about to deliver, is Cardinal Mendice, the Secretary of State of our Statto della Città del Vaticano."

At this point there was a burst of static, as if the recorder's microphone had been dropped or jarred in a clumsy transfer of hands, and the secretary's voice came on a second later, identifying himself awkwardly, as if uncertain what he was supposed to say. Quillans chanced a quick look at the man, whose ears were pink with embarrassment. Then the Pope's haunting voice resumed.

"I have been drawn into the body of God for these past few minutes, and in this brief time He has revealed to me His great Plan for the church. I am with Him now and He with me. He has asked me to assure you that it is only through Him, his power, that I am able to speak at all; and that it is truly He who is speaking to you, through me."

These words were uttered with extreme care, the hollow voice speaking slowly and clearly, as if to ensure there would be no misinterpretation of his arcane message.

The Cardinals as one in-took a gasp of air, tears springing to their eyes at this revelation that they were indeed hearing the voice of God. A significant pause followed the statement, the death rattle of the Pope's labored breathing - which had filled the spaces between the precisely measured words - now the only sound in the room. The Secretary took this moment to stop the tape and inquire if anyone would like to hear that last section again.

The men in the room looked at one another, then one by one shook their heads to the negative. Mendice nodded and restarted the tape without comment.

"First, to my able physician Doctor Frederico, these instructions: I am _not_ to be removed from the Vatican palace no matter how grave my condition. Further, I am to be given no drugs or medications of the nature that impair or alter the functioning of the central nervous system; only antibiotics may be administered, should the need arise. However, as it is God's desire that this mortal body be kept alive until its final purpose has been fulfilled, you are strongly enjoined to use all the other so-called miracles of modern medicine to that end, including life-support machines if necessary."

"Next, to my Secretary of State, Cardinal Mendice: My first mandate is that you ensure the rest of what I am about to say is kept in strictest confidence, to be revealed to none save those whom I specifically name herein, until such time as I give permission to release the content of this tape to the rest of the Sacred College and thence to the world."

The tape was halted again, and the little statesman stood up to face the other men in the room, his ruddy face creased with worry.

"Eminent brothers in God, at this point I need to consult with you on a matter of grave concern to which I have given much reflection these past few days. Let me say first that the Pontiff was so adamant on this last point that he had me lock the door to his chambers and admit no one, not even the physician, until he was finished speaking. Near the end of the recording you will hear a pounding noise in the background: Doctor Frederico, demanding entry," he smiled.

"Now, all of you here tonight, save one, have been ordained by the Holy Father to be present for the further playing of this tape. Whether or not that one not so designated should be allowed to stay for the remainder of the message is what I need your help to decide."

Several of the Cardinals glanced at Archbishop Quillans, the stranger in their midst, with well-mannered distrust.

"The person not specifically named by the Pope to hear the rest of this recording is our beloved Nuncio to Spain," the Secretary nodded with a look of apologetic regret at the portly Italian emissary; "Archbishop Luigi Magliano."

Expressions of surprise registered on the faces of the seven other Cardinal Bishops as they turned toward Magliano, who wriggled uncomfortably in his chair, his cheeks glowing ruddily. A flicker of amusement passed over Quillans' face and was instantly gone, like the shadow of a cloud racing over an ice-encrusted field.

"The problem with which I was faced initially was that in order to carry out the Holy Father's directives in this sensitive matter it was vital that I have some sort of assistance." The Papal Secretary hesitated for a moment, considering, then turned to the Italian Nuncio. "Archbishop Magliano, please forgive my rudeness, but perhaps it would be better were you to wait in the study. There are some points in the latter portion of the tape which I need to make the others aware of before they can come to an informed decision regarding this delicate situation."

The Cardinal rang a small silver bell, and almost immediately his aide appeared from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel tucked into his apron. "Please escort his Excellency to my study and see to his comfort if you will, Deacon Armandi. I will ring you again when he is to be summoned."

As soon as the pair were safely out of earshot the diminutive Cardinal, fidgeting nervously with his sapphire ring, continued.

"The Pope, as you will soon hear for yourselves, left explicit instructions regarding the secrecy with which the members of this group were to be brought and maintained here, stressing the necessity for each of you to be sequestered within a few minutes of his Holiness's bedside."

Several men in the audience nodded - they had already learned this much in their initial private meetings with the Secretary.

"I was therefore faced with the exquisite dilemma of how to successfully carry out these mandates of secrecy. Obviously I personally could not meet those of you who arrived by air without being spotted by our inquisitive and ever watchful media, thus drawing unwanted scrutiny regarding your presence here. There was also the problem of how to maintain a semblance of normalcy in the Suburban Sees, so that vital church business would not lapse nor attract attention to the conspicuous absence of the Cardinal Bishops commonly in charge of such affairs," he indicated the six Italians in the room with a wave of his arm.

"We needed someone knowledgeable, trustworthy and discrete to act both as liaison for our travelers from abroad, as well as for the Bishops of Rome in order to courier the more vital and sensitive dispatches between your auxiliaries and yourselves during your stay here. As you are aware, there are several matters of important business in progress at the moment which cannot be postponed for any length of time. Thus my Gordian knot," he sighed, raising his palms upward. "To be sure, I have already abridged the Holy Father's directives by bringing Archbishop Magliano into this even as much as I have, but I assure you I could not have carried out the Pontiff's design thus far without his assistance.

Up to this point I have only told the Archbishop as much as I've told the rest of you," he assured them; "which is that you were all brought here _in camera_ at the specific behest of Pope Marcus. The first of Magliano's instructions were only to ensure that Archbishop Quillans' arrival in Rome be anonymous and unrecognized, and that Patriarch Synarus be similarly met and escorted to the palace with a minimum of attention from the press, both of which tasks he carried out admirably."

He rubbed his blue eyes wearily, perhaps a little guiltily. "I may have gone a little further than I should have, but it soon seemed necessary to explain the presence and circumstances that brought the rest of you here as well. He'd of course observed your arrivals, and in any case I needed to alert him to the fact that he would be called on to act as your courier to the Sees while you are in residence here."

"Your Eminence?" It was the youngest of the Cardinal Bishops, fifty-eight year old Paolo Bertini, Camerlingo of the College of Cardinals.

"Yes Cardinal Bertini?"

"Is it really necessary for Archbishop Magliano to know the remainder of what is on that tape in order to carry out the functions to which you've already assigned him?"

The old statesman hesitated a moment before replying: "No, I guess it really isn't. I felt that, having taken him into my confidence this far, it would be only ... _considerate_ to include him in on the rest of it as well." He lifted his shoulders almost to his ears with a comically apologetic grimace. "I see now, thanks to your thoughtful question, that this would be ill advised. Any further breach of the Holy Father's command to secrecy would be unwarranted. I am grateful to you for pointing this out, Cardinal."

The Bishop of Frascati settled back on the dark leather chair with a satisfied expression, his dark eyes darting to the other, older Cardinals whose heads nodded in approval. They looked like lizards basking in the sun, Quillans thought; their sluggish old blood drained from the centers of thought to their over-full stomachs.

But he made a mental note to keep a particular eye on Bertini; thus far he was the only one present who had evinced enough of an independent and functioning mind to potentially question the upcoming revelations from the Pope.

"Well then," smiled the Cardinal Secretary; "if we are all in accord?"

They nodded in unison again. Mendice rang for his steward and instructed the young man to take a fresh brandy to the waiting Nuncio and one for himself, "then keep Archbishop Magliano company until our private business here has been concluded."

At the request of the eldest Cardinal, white-haired and palsied Carlo Capione of the Sabina See, the Papal Secretary reset the tape to its very beginning and replayed the first sections to refresh their memories. Again the strangeness of the tonal quality struck them all: it was as hollow and distant as a voice at the bottom of a well, flat as a mirror. This time the Secretary allowed the tape to continue straight through to the end without interruption. The Papal orders, given in that weirdly echoic voice, were direct and to the point: Archbishop Robert Quillans of the San Francisco Archdiocese was to be brought at once to the Vatican under conditions of strictest secrecy, and kept close at hand for a "special purpose" to be revealed in the near future.(Although the precise manner of such revelation was not clarified.) The Patriarch of Alexandria was likewise to be secretly sequestered in the palace along with the six Cardinal Bishops of Rome, these seven constituting the hierarchy of top ranking officials in the Roman Catholic Church.

Basically there was nothing new to be learned here, other than hearing the directives given in the Pope's own voice, and the sense of redundancy dulled the listeners' attention so that they almost missed the significance of his final statement... all but Quillans, who heard every word with a thrill of satisfaction.

"Pardon me, Cardinal Mendice." It was the strident baritone of the youthful Camerlingo once again. "Could you please replay that last section, from where the Holy Father adjures us not to heed any dire prognoses by the doctors?"

"Yes, certainly ... I was going to suggest it myself," he agreed, bending to fuss with the buttons again until he had the tape partly rewound. As he pressed the play button, all the men leaned forward in concentration.

"You may be told by the physicians attending my body that I am near death, that recovery is hopeless, that I will never again regain consciousness. They may even say that I am medically dead, that my brain registers no sign of activity. I implore you to have faith, for I will remain with this body and return to you regardless of what they say. I am _not_ this body, I am _not_ this brain - though I am of the body and brain to the extent that I need them as tools to communicate with you in this physical medium so that you and others will believe."

The Pope's voice was thinning now, weakening; the rasp of his labored breathing between the words becoming more pronounced. Obviously struggling, he went on: "If it comes to the point where it is necessary to keep this body alive by machines, then you must have them brought in. I need this body to bring you God's word in a manner which leaves no doubt as to its meaning, intent and source, a manner which can be physically recorded, just as this message has been. Only in this way will even the most skeptical disbelievers know the Word of God does exist. It is in expectation and anticipation of this holy Directive, which is to be given during my second awakening, that our religion's top officials must be kept nearby, to act first as witnesses to the miracle and then as devoted generals who will carry out its decrees without question, hesitation or modification of any sort."

The tape ended abruptly, a brief rumble of amplified rustling as the microphone was set down, the recorder turned off, and then just the soft whirring noise of the empty tape running through the reel.

Cardinal Mendice shut the player off and rose from the hearth, his hands clasped before him. Not surprisingly, most of the elderly Cardinals in the room were quietly weeping.

"As you are aware, the Holy Father's condition has gradually deteriorated since this message was recorded," he said, his voice and expression solemn. "As he himself predicted, the doctors have issued reports that he is gravely ill, that he will die without regaining consciousness. Their tests indicate massive brain damage from the cerebral hemorrhage. Just this evening I was told by Doctor Frederico that the electroencephalogram was flat, that without the heart-lung machine Pope Marcus has been attached to since Saturday, he would surely succumb within a few hours." He paused, looking from face to face.

"Just how accurate _is_ this device?"

Quillans looked around to see who was speaking: it was Cardinal Falliano this time, a man of nearly seventy, moderately tall with a full, handsome mane of white hair above his tanned and deeply lined face. But despite his still vital appearance, a slight haze had begun to dull the blue of his eyes, and Quillans sensed that he too was starting to lose a bit of cognitive function.

"What I meant to ask," the Dean of the College of Cardinals explained; "is can we be absolutely sure, based on this imperfect and potentially fallible mechanical instrument, that no life, no hope, exists?" His voice quavered, whether with age or emotion Quillans couldn't be certain.

"A good point, Cardinal Falliano," acknowledged the Secretary; "and one which we might do well to pursue from a theological standpoint at some later date. When is turning off life support more in line with God's will than keeping it on? Luckily we are spared from having to make such a judgment now. Were it not for this..." he patted the tape player on his lap almost fondly; "we might be faced with a most difficult and far reaching decision regarding what determines death, one that would not only affect the Holy Father but would ultimately set a precedent for the entire church in such matters. As things stand, however, it is a moot point. The Pontiff's instructions are clear cut and indisputable: we simply do _not_ disconnect the machines - not until or unless he himself says differently. To do otherwise is to go against the direct word of God. Meanwhile, we wait for his next message."

"But while we wait our church is without a leader, the Papal line is broken," protested Camerlingo with some concern. "How long can we go on like this?"

"As long as we must, Cardinal Bertini," the rebuke was mild, but firm; " as long as we must."

Chapter 9

Wednesday June 14th

San Francisco

Joe was as mystified as he was pleased by the change he felt in himself, the sense of inner power and control that had blossomed inside him since the meeting with Anton Hawley three days earlier. It was like being high without the delusions.

He could remember similar feelings of euphoria in the past, generally associated with the release stage of some excellent weed or other recreational drug, but those feelings - although containing a certainty of found truth at the time - had invariably dissipated, leaving him wooden and depressed. This time, however, the exhilaration was not only lasting, it was increasing every day. It seemed like everything attempted went perfectly and effortlessly the past three days, and the more things went right, the more confident and empowered he felt.

Now, Wednesday evening, as he drove over to the rectory to pick up Marija, he found himself smiling broadly as he contemplated the night's upcoming event. He was filled with a sublime confidence that it would all turn out as perfectly as everything else had the past few days, that the séance would prove to be the ultimate resolution to Marija's problems and their life together could go on from here as sweetly normal as any married couple's.

***

Monday night Joe, Marija and Mike had gone to visit the medium recommended by the spiritualist Ms Salvida, one "Madame Le Beuc."

The self-proclaimed necromancer occupied the bottom flat of a huge, disreputable old Victorian on Sutter Street, on the wrong side of the re-gentrified slum. She'd invited them in only as far as the front parlor that evening, but Joe had observed several other doors leading off the long gloomy entry hall.

This first room looked out through an oversized bay window onto the garbage, broken wine bottles and dog droppings that decorated the wide cement sidewalk outside. It was separated from the room behind by a pair of broad sliding wooden doors, partially open just enough to reveal a spacious high-ceilinged chamber beyond, with a large oval table in its center. This, Joe deduced, was probably the room in which the séance would be conducted.

Madame Le Beuc, aka Mildred Spencer according to an unpaid gas bill left on her desk, had looked as overdone as her pseudonym. Fat, blowsy, with puffy little eyes - their watery blueness almost lost entirely under the heavy layers of wrinkled silver eye shadow and inch-long false eyelashes - she'd polished off her occultist image in a silver turban and red silk Chinese robe embroidered front and back with a large black dragon. Her lips, painted bright red in a thirties style cupid's bow, had parted to reveal a set of cheap yellowing dentures when she smiled. Her handshake was clammy.

When she'd opened her mouth, it got even worse: She'd gabbled and expounded in mysterious whispery rhetoric \- as if the spirits themselves might overhear and learn something new - about the art and magic of necromancy. She claimed to be blessed with a "control," a spirit named Feena possessed of extraordinary courage and ability who acted as a go-between for her and the nether world. She also spoke modestly of her own gifts as a spiritualist.

But when she got around to her fees, she was all capitalistic grit.

Obviously she'd been briefed by Ms Salvida about the intensity of their situation, their desperation to resolve it, and Salvida's concerns about the inherent dangers.

My services will cost you five hundred dollars," she stated flatly, sitting down behind her antique rosewood desk and fumbling to don a pair of thick, rhinestone-framed glasses; "plus two hundred each for my two assistants. And no guarantees."

Joe had just as grittily bargained her down to four hundred dollars plus one hundred more for a single assistant, assuring her they would provide the second party to make up the minimum of six required for the séance. Mike and Marija had glanced over at him, wondering who he had in mind, but he'd only smiled.

"Payable in advance," the middle-aged woman had insisted, holding out her moist chubby palm.

"I'd rather pay you Wednesday night, just before we begin," Joe maintained, while she resolutely shook her head and continued to hold out her hand, wiggling her fingers.

They'd finally settle on one hundred dollars as a good faith deposit, with the balance due Wednesday before the séance got underway.

Marija and the priest had politely remained out of these negotiations, but as soon as they were back in the car the two turned on Joe with a barrage of questions, doubts and misgivings about the wisdom of going through with this séance at all as a complete waste of time and money.

"I just don't believe she's for real, Joe," MJ had complained, "so what good can she do?" Mike basically echoed her sentiments in his own choice phraseology.

"What's the harm then?" Joe had fended off their objections good naturedly. "If she helps, great; if not it should at least be entertaining...and I've spent more on ringside seats for a boxing match that only went one round." He winked at them both, but there was an extra message in his eyes for Mike, hinting of more to say once the two men were alone.

Over tumblers of scotch in Muldoon's private study after MJ'd retired for the night, Joe revealed what was really on his mind.

"Sure the old broad's as phony as a three dollar bill," he'd readily agreed; "but she might provide the sort of placebo effect Marija needs to get back in control."

Mike's eyebrow had lifted a notch as he sank down into his old easy chair and waited for Joe to continue.

"Look," the other man had said earnestly; "this obsession with demons has MJ coming and going, right? She's afraid to leave the rectory, afraid to sleep, she's lost her job...She can't go on like this much longer."

"Agreed," the priest nodded, waiting for the point to be made.

"Well, it seems to me that it's as much due to her fear as anything else that this thing, whatever it is, has such power over her. Her fear of it eats away at her constantly, grabs hold of her mind so she can think of nothing else...and isn't that what _obsession_ means? I think it is precisely because she's so terrified of it, so weakened and immobilized by that terror, that she believes she can no longer hold the source of that fear in check."

Joe's eyes had glittered, sparkling with a fiery certainty as he spoke. But then that certainty waivered, like a candle flame in a little breeze, as he'd added: "This would be true whether what's been happening to her is the result of some kind of actual contact or just in her mind, don't you think?"

Mike had taken a long swallow of his drink, letting the amber liquid burn down his throat before he answered. "Yes, I would...and I see what you're getting at with regard to the séance. If the medium can put on a good enough show, convince Marija that she has actually communicated with her evil spirits and rendered them harmless, perhaps her fear will dissipate enough that she will be able to withstand them. Of course we're going to have to build the woman's authenticity up a bit in MJ's eyes: At the moment she seems pretty disillusioned with the whole idea. Maybe we could tell her we've checked out the medium and that she has a pretty high reputation as a spiritualist despite her tendency to overdo the trappings. If MJ buys it, it just might work."

Thoughtfully he'd stroked his short beard, considering the plan. There was something about the logic that vaguely disturbed him but he couldn't put his finger on it just then.

When Joe had gone on to suggest Mrs. McGilvroy as the sixth member of their séance, Mike had smiled, then grinned broadly, then thrown back his head and roared with laughter.

"Perfect," he'd gasped, wiping his eyes. "She'll be totally scandalized...and love it! Especially when I explain the placebo effect idea to salve her pangs of conscience." He'd paused for a minute, letting his gaiety subside before asking more seriously: "Do you think one of us should talk to Madame Le Beuc..." but merely saying the name broke him up again, the last syllable snorting out through his nose as he doubled over in a delicious fit of giggling. "Le _Buick_ that is...52 model year, built like a Sherman tank with chrome skirts."

It was infectious: Joe had smirked, then chortled, then given in to helpless laughter, tears in his eyes. It took several tries before Mike had finally been able to complete his question.

"Do you suppose," he'd said finally, taking deep slow breaths to calm himself, "that we should talk to...this medium about what we're trying to accomplish? Brief her so that she doesn't blow it?"

They'd batted around the idea for a while, at last deciding against it. Even if the woman was a phony, she'd never admit it to them...And she might take offense at the suggestion, refusing to do the séance at all. Besides, Ms. Salvida had probably already clued her in as to what was needed based on what Joe'd told her.

So they'd left it alone, hoping for the best, figuring the odds were with them that, as an astute businesswoman, "Madame Le Buick" would have sense enough to set things up so that her client would triumph.

***

Now the day had come, and within a few hours they'd know if the gamble had paid off. As Joe pulled into the rectory driveway and cut the engine he saw Marija waiting for him in the lighted doorway, looking beautiful. His heart leapt with a sudden rush of love for the woman. He jumped from his car and ran to her waiting arms, hugging her tightly and swinging her around like a schoolgirl.

"Ready for the big night?" he whispered into her ear.

"I guess," she smiled playfully, pushing her head back to look him in the eyes; "but I can think of something I'd much rather be doing."

"Maybe after tonight," he grinned, losing himself in those wide hazel eyes, trying not to hang on the dark pain beneath their bright surface. "I think everything will be okay again after tonight."

Mike came to the door just then, dressed in his minister's black shirt and jacket. Seeing Joe's appraising look, he smiled, fingering the white tab inserted in his clerical collar. "I was tempted to go in my hippie lumberjack disguise, but since this is something bordering on the black arts, I'd feel guilty if I didn't go in proclaiming loud and clear whose side I'm on."

"Gotcha," Joe smiled back, grabbing the man's shoulder in a friendly squeeze. "Now, are you going to invite me in or what?"

The little wooden clock in the sitting room chimed six times as they walked through the entry hall. They had three hours to go, three hours to fill with nervous small talk _,_ picking at a dinner for which they had no appetite and nursing slow drinks over long introspective silences as they waited for the nine o'clock hour to roll around, the time for the séance to begin. It seemed forever.

Chapter 10

Thursday June 15th

3AM, Rome

At the same time Joe entered the rectory to await the 9PM séance, another man half a world away was being pulled from sleep into a different sort of reality.

His sleep was light, his dream intensely sexual as usual...so near the surface of his mind he wasn't even sure he _was_ dreaming until the stout finger poking at his shoulder, the rough whisper calling in his ear, and the garlic breath assaulting his nose dissolved the erotic pictures and pulled him reluctantly back to conscious awareness.

He opened his eyes slowly against the unwelcome glare of the bare overhead light. The ruddy face of Archbishop Magliano - glistening with perspiration even now in the predawn chill - hovered anxiously over him.

"Archbishop Quillans, ti prego!" the Italian urged, his voice rising in anxiety. "It is Il Papa, he has awakened. He has summoned you! You must come to the infirmary at once!"

The American grunted in acknowledgement and slid his feet over the edge of the narrow bed, holding the blanket modestly over his naked form. "If you will allow me a moment of privacy to dress?" he suggested, his tone icy.

"I'll wait outside, Excellency," the Italian Archbishop acquiesced, stung again by the man's rudeness and snobbery. As he waited in the hallway, he was struck by the observation that the American had not seemed in the least excited by the astounding news. Magliano might have simply been announcing breakfast for all the surprise it engendered. But before he had a chance to pursue this line of thinking further, the door opened and the steely-eyed cleric from San Francisco walked out into the dark chilly hallway.

They proceeded in mutually stony silence, Magliano in the lead, taking the ornate gilded elevator to the first floor, then across the deserted tiled lobby, their footsteps echoing against the high ceiling. The route took them through a maze of dim hallways ending finally in the brightly lit corridor outside the suite of offices that constituted the Vatican infirmary.

Magliano opened one of the twin glass-paned doors for his confrere and followed him inside, closing it quietly behind them. Although normally the palace infirmary served as both outpatient clinic and temporary emergency hospital for the palace staff, ever since the Pope was stricken it had been reserved for his care alone. The few current inpatients and those members of the curia needing emergency care had been routed to Roman hospitals outside the city walls for treatment, leaving the little clinic oddly quiet and empty.

Quillans now preceded Magliano, striding forward as if he knew instinctively where he was headed. They passed through another pair of swinging doors beyond the empty waiting room, through an examination area where two nursing nuns knelt in a darkened corner murmuring in prayer, and from there down a broad hall off which were a series of stencil-numbered doors.

As the two Archbishops hurried forward, one of these doors opened and two white-jacketed medics emerged, talking in low, excited whispers. Immediately behind them followed the short, trim figure of the Papal Secretary, whose worried expression lifted somewhat when he spotted the American headed his way.

"Praise Jesus," he exclaimed in a hushed voice; "you have arrived in time! The rest are already inside." As he urged the man through the door, he turned his head to convey his regret to the Italian Nuncio that he could not be invited to join them. "In good conscience, I must adhere to the Pontiff's wishes in this matter, little father," he sighed with an affectionate look at Magliano.

"I understand, your Eminence," the portly man smiled graciously.

The door closed, leaving him and the two doctors to stare in silent consternation at each other, then at the impassive glass face of the door behind which a miracle of some kind was taking place.

Pope Marcus the Third lay on the hospital bed, the upper third of his gaunt frame propped up by white linen-covered pillows. His face was gray with the pallor of death; his hair limp, thin, gray also; his long skeletal yellow fingers splayed against the white sheets that were pulled up to cover his chest. The breathing tubes, recently removed, hung over the metal bed frame near his head.

His eyes shot open as Quillans entered the room, eyes incongruously dark and alive against the deathliness of his body. The thin fingers twitched, beckoning his audience forward.

"Turn on the recorder," the voice hissed from behind nearly unmoving lips. The sound of it was a shock, even to the Archbishop from San Francisco. A hollow, sibilant whisper, it seemed to come from somewhere deep within the man...or beyond him. And the breath was so exceedingly foul - a pit of death and decay - that Quillans had to force himself not to recoil from it.

"God speaks through my lips," the Pope pronounced, rasping into the microphone on his chest as the tape recorder whirred. "Let no man doubt this is so. If there are still those who cannot accept this news on faith, then I offer them medical proof as well - the signed and sworn statements of my attending physicians that my awakening, my speaking to you now in this moribund condition, is a physical impossibility. Thus it follows that it must be God's will, must be _His_ words spoken through me that you now hear."

The room filled with the terrible mephitis of the dying Pontiff, with the awesome words, the appalling sound of his voice. The six Cardinals of the suburban sees leaned forward intently, as if not to miss a single word, yet they kept their heads bent down, eyes averted from the sight of the the cadaverous prolucutor. Only the Patriarch of Alexandria looked directly at the Pontiff, weeping openly, while the Cardinal Secretary busied himself with the recorder, trying to hide his complex emotions.

None observed on Quillans' face the tiniest trace of a smile trying to work its way around the steely resolve which kept his lips tightly compressed, a slight twitch at the corners of his mouth, which the others would have taken to be a nervous tic, its only manifestation.

"What I tell you next is God's decree and must be obeyed as such even though you may find it highly unusual." He paused momentarily, the amplified sound of his strangled breathing penetrating the silence just as his stench penetrated the air.

"You have among you at this moment a very special man, chosen of God for a very special mission."

There was another slight pause in the rasping whisper, long enough for the Cardinals in the room to exchange looks.

"The first duty of this secret consistory is to confirm my nomination of that man - Archbishop Robert Quillans - to the holy station of Cardinal."

A brilliant, laser-thin flash of recognition shot between his eyes and those of the tall, composed Archbishop at these words, but it went unnoticed amidst the flurry of small gasps and murmurs escaping the other men's lips.

"It shall be done, Your Holiness," the Secretary of State assured him, bending near but not inhaling.

"Good. You shall prepare the biglietto at the conclusion of this meeting," Pope Marcus ordered. "The public ceremony may be waived in this instance, but the presentation of his ring and holy vestments of office must be made in a private ceremony first thing tomorrow, to be attended only by those Cardinals present here tonight. Dean Falliano will do the honors in my stead."

The very room seemed to be darkening while the Pontiff spoke, his words collecting like shadows in the corners of the ward, the stench emanating from him like a slow brown mist discoloring the air.

"Is everything I have ordered thus far understood?" he rumbled.

"Understood, your Holiness," Cardinal Mendice assured him nervously.

"Excellent, because I have a further revelation from God to impart now." The gray sunken cheeks quivered in an attempt to smile, the black, black eyes shone and sparked. "I have been in the company of God for several days now, and He has revealed to me His plans for the future of our church and the continuing role I am to play in creating that future. He has now ordained that I remain alive _indefinitely_ , even though I be technically dead, so that from time to time He may again speak directly to you and the world through these frail lips. When He is not using me in this manner, I will be returned to the deathful coma in which you've found me these past five days, kept alive by machines." He waited, letting his words sink in.

"The problem you, the administrators of the worldwide church, are faced with as a result of this lingering death-state in your elected Pope, is how to manage over an extended period of time without a functional head of state," the Pontiff went on, voicing their unspoken concern.

"Thus the second major task that God hereby assigns you in this consistory is to transcribe, as a Motu Proprio, our decree that an auxiliary Pope be elected at once to carry out all the Papal functions, both spiritual and temporal, while I am incapacitated. One of the most important duties of the auxiliary Pope will be to ensure that any future mandates of God which are passed through my lips will be carried out surely, promptly, and exactly, without either wasteful deliberation or destructive alteration of their precise import."

The Cardinals were murmuring again among themselves, and Cardinal Mendice turned toward them with a fiery warning glance. Their chatter immediately abated.

The withered old man on the bed continued, his voice both deeply resonant and as flat and lifeless as something originating from an electronic synthesizer. It was unlike anything the learned Cardinals at his bedside had ever heard, yet there was a woman half a world away who might have recognized it.

"A stipulation of my Motu Proprio is that the election of this auxiliary Pope shall be accomplished by limited delegation rather than through general conclave; and the only members of this delegation are to be the nine of you here tonight. The customary fifteen day wait after the death of a Pope is, of course, waived, as there is no death involved. Therefore the election must be held within the next three days."

Several of the old, white-haired heads had begun nodding in solemn agreement - or possibly numb amazement - and two of the Cardinal Bishops now had, like the Easter Patriarch, tears flowing freely down their withered cheeks. The others looked variously stricken, enraptured or confused. Archbishop Quillans continued to successfully suppress his smile.

"Lastly," the Pope's voice echoed out of the depths, catching each member's attention anew with its intensity; "is the matter of who God has selected for this task, to act in my place as your Pontiff while I remain in this limbo, the humble vessel of God."

Although his head was perfectly still, the Pope's sharp eyes darted from face to face, enjoying the anticipation building in each.

"Usually you, the members of the Sacred College, are left to choose a new Pope on your own initiative, with faith that God's hand is working through you. This time the Father wishes no possibility that His will might be misinterpreted through the fallibilities of human judgment. Therefore let me state clearly and unequivocally that the person He has selected, which is your only choice for auxiliary Pontiff, is the new Cardinal designate, Robert F. Quillans, former Archbishop of San Francisco."

Audible gasps could be heard around the room. A ring of faces turned as one to Quillans, who stood at the foot of the bed attempting to mask his inner excitement with a solemn expression of piety.

"I tire now, and I have said all that I must," the Holy Father said, his voice drawing away. "Before I return to my place with God, may I have the word of each of you present here tonight that the orders I have commended to you will be carried out precisely as given?"

Mumbled words of assent filled the space around the bed: What else could they say? It was, after all, God's will.

"Secretary Mendice," the voice came now from far, far away; "as each step in my decree is completed you may release the news, first to the Roman Catholic hierarchy, then to the media. But you must only release transcripts of my message," the voice was fast disappearing in a whispery hiss. "Do not release the tapes themselves, not to anyone. Lock them in the archives vault. Never play the tapes, not the tapes...."

Pope Marcus the Third was gone, back to where ever he now dwelt. The breathing tubes were re-inserted, the machines that ran his body whirred on. The miracle was over; but something else had now begun.

Chapter 11

Wednesday June 14

9PM San Francisco

They'd gathered in the front parlor, a nervous little clot of men and women trying to mask, with limited success, their own personal uncertainties and feelings of embarrassment at being part of this upcoming folly by filling the awkward silence with non-stop banter.

Madame Le Beuc had insisted on serving coffee to her guests before the séance commenced. It was her traditional "ice breaker", essential to the success of the proceedings. "It will help bring us all closer together and make us more comfortable with our surroundings, bringing our auras into spiritual harmony," she'd proclaimed.

Of course the ample portions of cheap brandy she'd added to the pot of brew might have something to do with the hoped for success, Joe sniggered to Mike, his eyes watering slightly from the heavy alcoholic fumes that were rising from his china mug. If they drank more than one cup of the stuff they'd be so tipsy they'd probably believe anything she threw at them.

During the ice breaker they'd been introduced to the sixth member of their party, a tall, middle-aged African American with a touch of gray at his temples, a grizzle of grey whiskers on his cheeks and chin, and a mocking, tired, supercilious glint in his red-rimmed eyes.

The professor, as the medium called him, was a mediocre philosopher given to rambling erudition and, from the way he was putting away the brandy-laced coffee (after the first cup omitting the coffee altogether) an unapologetically committed alcoholic.

He was also, Muldoon suspected in a whispered aside to Joe, a sometime bedroom companion of their hostess, from the way they snarled at one another.

When the preliminaries were finally over, they were ushered into the dimly lit middle room by the spurious medium - tonight dressed to the hilt in her interpretation of Lady Merlin: a long, flowing black gown decorated in swirling patterns of glittery silver sequins, her silver turban embellished with a huge red paste jewel. Her makeup was, if such were possible, even more overdone than before, and she seemed a trifle tipsy as she directed them to their places.

The room was nearly as tall as it was wide, the twelve foot ceiling painted the same deep midnight blue as the walls and floor, but speckled with luminescent silver paint in a half-baked replication of the northern constellations.

Dominating the center of the room was a large oval table, draped to the floor in a cheap black satin throw with a wrinkly hand sewn seam down the middle. An odd selection of wavy mirrors hung in haphazard arrangement about the four walls, - their purpose - Joe surmised - to be used in some kind of optical illusions the medium had in store.

Madame Le Beuc sat at the head of the table, Joe and Mike on either side of her. Marija was placed next to Joe, Mrs. McGilvroy opposite her beside the priest, and the dour black man filled the space between the two ladies at the far end of the table from the medium.

"Before we begin," the spiritualist said, looking around the table with narrowed eyes; "there are a few basic rules you must adhere to without fail. To disobey these would be to court _disaster_." The woman pointed her finger heavenward to add appropriate emphasis to her pronouncement.

Joe cast a worried glance at MJ; he'd spent the last two days trying to play up Le Beuc's credibility, wanting MJ to believe in her so that the psychodrama of the séance would create the desired effect. Now he was beginning to wish he'd briefed the medium after all: An extra fifty or so would have assuaged any affront to her professional dignity and ensured her cooperation, he was sure. If she continued to overplay her role this way, Joe feared MJ would see right through her antics and all the hoped for results would be lost. MJ caught his look and smiled.

"First rule," the turbaned spiritualist went on, her voice irritatingly high and nasal; "absolute silence is to be maintained at all times - no chitchat, no comments, remarks or questions that might break the line of connection with the spirit world. The next rule is that no one is to get up from this table for any reason, from the moment the lights are dimmed to the conclusion of the séance. Even in ordinary circumstances the spirits evoked through necromancy are unpredictable and may become hostile or threatening. In your particular case," she sent her narrow, pig-eyed gaze in Marija's direction; "the spirits we intend to contact are already known to be antagonistic, at least to you personally. To break the safety of our circle would be to leave yourself totally vulnerable to their power. Beyond this field, once the séance has begun, there will remain only a timeless void, a black abyss full of unknown perils and terrible forces. This table, our joining of hands around it, is the only hold you or any of us will have on this plane of reality. Do not forsake it!"

Mike grabbed Mrs. McGilvroy's hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze; she squeezed back as if to comfort him, as if the big burly priest were a frightened boy. The medium, seeing she was creating the desired effect, continued with even more fervor.

"You must realize that in our joining hands we become as one being, one mind. What one of us does affects everyone present. Thus if even one of you breaks the circle you throw all our combined power into the hands of our adversaries, put us all at their mercy. Therefore I must reemphasize this: _never_ , for any reason, break the circle of hands. Do you all understand these rules?"

Each person murmured a self-conscious affirmation except Leroy, the black professor, who took the opportunity to sneak a quick belt of Southern Comfort from the pint bottle tucked into his pocket. This the medium chose to ignore.

"Fine, fine," Madame Le Beuc smiled, exposing her yellowing dentures. "Now then, those are the hard and fast rules. There are, in addition, some suggestions that, though they cannot be enforced, would greatly enhance the success of our necromantic experience here tonight if you would all at least attempt to carry them out in good faith."

Joe stirred restlessly in his chair, trying to squirm away a persistent itch in a portion of his anatomy best scratched in private. The medium shot him a hard look and continued.

"I would ask that you let yourself flow with the forces that surround us. Do not fight them, do not try to rationalize them away. Try, for just one evening, to put away your self-protective attitudes of cynicism and disbelief; set your spiritual nature free to riser to higher planes of awareness." She was waving a pink-nailed hand in a swirling motion above her head. " _Believe_ , if you will, ladies and gentlemen. _Believe_!"

With that final dramatic admonition the lights suddenly went out, leaving only a blue, hazy glow directed at the table from a hidden spotlight behind the woman's head, casting the medium in an eerie aura and reflecting in shadowy patches across the faces of the five other people at the table.

"Join hands in the never-ending circle of eternal life," the medium droned. "Join hands and join spirits...the séance has begun!"

Mildred Spencer Le Beuc fluttered her eyelids and let her head flop forward, ignoring the sharp twinge of pain the movement sent through her arthritic vertebrae. She allowed herself a fleeting smile while her face was thus tucked down out of view. Never having had a genuine spiritual experience in her life, she none-the-less-possessed a wily flair for the dramatics needed to con the gullible neurotics who sought her services. She also had an obsessive and vivid ongoing fantasy, the never-dying hope that she might this time succeed in achieving real contact with the spirit world. This helped the credibility of her act considerably. But the majority of the credit for her successes would have to go to the special talents of her technical assistant, the professor aka Leroy Turner.

He had been a special effects technician with Universal Studios until thirteen years ago, when his descent into alcohol had made his hands too shaky, his performance too unreliable for even the union to intercede on his behalf any longer. From Hollywood he'd slowly odd-jobbed his way north through the hot, dry cities of the sprawling San Joaquin Valley - Bakersfield, Fresno, Merced, Stockton, and finally San Francisco - earning just enough to feed his thirst for oblivion, moving on when the bills piled too high for him to talk his way out of them. He'd been on the verge of moving on again when Mildred Spencer first met him nine years ago. He'd been sent by her reluctant slumlord to piece together some faulty wiring in her flat, and had been there ever since. She was a slightly slimmer and firmer forty two then, he a rather withered forty-five with a suffering liver and little hope.

The first thing the woman did was to sober him up. Then she took him to her bed and, with a patience born of desperate loneliness, brought him to the point where he could perform the act he'd given up as lost forever years before. After that it had been no problem to enlist his expertise in creating an elaborate system of electronically controlled magic in the middle room, the eerie effects she dreamed up for her recently acquired avocation as a spiritual medium. With his help she soon had, literally at her fingertips, all those strange and frightening phenomena she imagined should happen in a séance but, for all her efforts, had never deigned to occur naturally.

She'd given him a room in her home, a cut of the take, and a renewed sense of his manhood. What did it matter that in the succeeding years he'd slowly slipped back into the embrace of his former potent mistress, that their sexual encounters had subsequently become less and less frequent over the years? As long as he could still perform at her séances, his lack of performance in the bedroom bothered her very little, and it bothered him not at all.

Now the medium moaned loudly, throwing her head back in a strained arch. She clutched hard at the hands of the two men flanking her, rolling her eyes up into her head and mumbling incoherently. It was the professor's signal to press the lever beneath the throw rug at his feet that would begin the first special effect. He pushed on cue with the toe of his worn cowboy boot, but nothing happened. He tapped at the switch again with increased pressure, seeing the tension of disapproval in the corners of his consort's mouth.

"Oh spirits of the netherworld, hinderers of Hades, lost souls of the Earth," she intoned loudly, buying time; "arise and make thy presence known."

The professor stomped the lever hard, but the prerecorded moans and synthesized wailing, the refrigerated air blown in on clouds of dry ice vapor through invisible vents in the dark walls, the glowing amorphous shapes created out of cleverly concealed black lights revolving behind stencil-cut "ghosts" - all refused to materialize.

Suddenly there was a deep low rumbling from somewhere in the bowels of the Earth. The floor jumped and the table began to jitter and sway, jolting about on its stiff thick legs like a drunken sailor. The shuddering of the room increased to a violent shaking motion, the rumble intensified to a roar. Mirrors were flung from the walls, and in the further black depths of the room a heavy light fixture crashed to the floor, exploding in a burst of bluish white incandescence.

"My God, it's an earthquake!" Marija exclaimed, starting to jump up.

"Sit down!" The black man hissed, his large hand tightening on hers, pulling her back into the chair. "Don't break the chain!"

_What incredible timing,_ thought the medium, suppressing her own alarm with the opportunistic craft of a P.T. Barnum. "We hear you oh spirits of darkness!" she cried out in a quavering tone. "We thank you for answering our call."

A tremendous ear-shattering thunder, that of a jet engine at full throttle, filled the air at her words: two black painted windows on the left clung tenaciously to their rotting frames for a moment, quivering and bulging before blowing out in a shattering crash to the concrete side yard beyond. More hidden lights within the séance parlor burst in electrical flashes, illuminating briefly the frightened faces at the table in a strobe-like, kaleidoscope of horror.

Madame Le Beuc felt the beads of perspiration spring to her skin, pooling into little rivulets on her forehead and beneath her arms, running greasily down her neck and sides. Her sweat was beginning to stink - the acrid stench of fear - at the long-awaited success she now fervently wished had never come.

Joe glanced anxiously at Mike, barely visible across the dark gap that separated them: He too looked concerned. If this was just a show, it was a damned good one.

Marija's eyes looked huge in the shadowy light, her set features grim. She was clinging to Joe's hand with a grip so intense it was painful. Mrs. McGilvroy had her eyes closed, her mouth moving in silent prayer. The professor was staring down in the direction of his coat pocket where the hidden flask of whiskey lay out of reach; he too was perspiring heavily.

Abruptly the roaring cacophony of sound and motion ceased, replaced with an ominous hollow of silence. Slowly this soundless vacuum was filled by a low, almost inaudible moaning...sensed first as nothing more than a tremor vibrating the receptors of the inner ear, until slowly the vibrations raised in pitch enough to be discerned by the brain as noise. It was the type of sound that crawled along the spine in scratchy footfalls on its way to seize the heart.

The moaning gradually increased in key and volume, filling the room with unbearable anguish. The six mortals around the table began to twist their heads back and forth as if seeking escape, tears pouring down their cheeks, but the shrieking persisted, individuating slowly into a dozen different voices. With the voices came a sudden penetrating chill, and from out of the darkness a swirling, pulsating phosphorescent cloud began to materialize, then another and another. In seconds the room was filled with trembling nebulous forms in softly luminescent shades of violet, green and blue. Moaning, shrieking, sighing, they shot over and through the circle of humans in a spinning dance, a sucking vortex.

No one seemed able to move, to scream, even to shiver. They all sat transfixed, helplessly immobilized by the completeness of their terror.

Faces began to form now within the intangible mists - weird, distorted, cadaverous etchings with darkly gaping mouths and black eye sockets sculpted into the vaporous heads. Their encircling motion died out gradually, along with their hideous screams, as the countenances of the tormented spirits lost their skeletal quality, forming into holographic images of men, women and children, all pointing accusing fingers towards those in the circle.

Their mouths opened and they began to speak, but the words were garbled and unintelligible, their voices a hollow, wretched faraway sound as from the bottom of a well.

Slowly their voices came into focus as well, and as they did so, Marija began to understand what they were saying. It was a single word, repeated over and over, a name...her name. Marija, Marija, Marija!!!

Her insides dropped in a dizzying, nauseous free-fall of horror and shock.

"Noooo!!" She wailed, half rising from her chair, her hands still gripped tightly by the others in the circle. "Stop calling me!" She turned towards Joe, desperate and afraid. "It's just like the other time, the time in the kitchen I told you about...I know you didn't believe me then, but you'll see, you'll see now. The bugs..."

Even as she spoke, she heard the first chilling sounds of their approach, a faint, skittering scurrying noise inside the walls, in the ceiling above her head; the infinitesimal scratching of tiny claws magnified by the sheer multitude of its sources, like the faint thunder of a distant army marching to battle, the beat of thousands upon thousands of tiny chitinous boots tromping in wrath on the lath-and-plaster field of war.

She saw them now, just as she'd seen them then, once more locked into that vision of horror: First just one small bronze bullet dropping from the topmost cupboard shelf in the kitchen, its six tiny legs scrabbling uselessly for a foothold in the air as it free-fell to the counter below, then another and another. The scurrying sound increased in volume, as faster and faster they came, now by twos, now threes, now sixes, twenties, hundreds. The scratch of their clawed appendages grew to a roar behind the walls of the old Victorian flat.

"Oh my God, oh my God!" Marija screamed as a solid boiling wave of wriggling, shiny brown insects began to spill over the edge of the upper cupboard in a waterfall of living flesh, some pouring like a fountain, splashing off the lower counter shelf and onto the floor below while others wrapped their paths upside down along the bottom of the counter in defiance of gravity, and then ran down the wall in a solid sheet of vibrating legs and wing-covers. Whatever path they chose, all seemed bent on a single point of convergence, all were heading straight towards her.

By now there were cockroaches everywhere, pouring down the walls from all four sides of the room by the tens of thousands, emerging from every conceivable crack and crevice. Even the ceiling was covered by a moving tide of plump shiny insects, a blanket which grew thicker by the moment, bodies clinging to and crawling over other bodies until the layer was an inch or more thick. Then they began to let go, falling in a sporadic rain to land upon her hair, her face, her lips; to drop down between her breasts and crawl along her abdomen, while those on the floor began running up her legs and into her undergarments in an unbearably repulsive prickling sensation.

At some point Marija became aware of a loud, continuous high pitched shreiking sound. It took a minute for her to realize the awful noise was coming from her.

The others around the table saw no bugs - that was Marija's own private nightmare - but the rest was real enough to them: the ghostly shapes and voices, the frigid air, the unearthly sounds, the terror. And something else was felt as well, something slithering through their entrails as chillingly as MJ's cockroaches had slithered up her legs, something undeniably evil, an enormously strong and vile presence that now filled the room and penetrated their innermost beings. It took Marija's hysterical screaming to slap them awake.

"Break the circle," a voice implored out of the darkness. It was Mildred Spencer - Madame Le Beuc had fled - "Break the fucking circle!!"

Mike and Joe felt the furious yank of her hands against their grip and tried to release her, but their fingers refused to obey the commands of their brains. The erstwhile medium struggled even more frantically, twisting her fat body one way and the other, but to no avail. "Let me go, damn you...break the fucking circle!" she cried again hysterically, tears of fright streaming down her face.

The others began to struggle now as well, trying to free themselves from one another. A group panic set in when they discovered they couldn't. Their hands were frozen into place like the immobile rigor of the dead, the unrelenting tetany of the linesman who's inadvertently taken hold of a high-voltage wire and is forced to watch himself die, helpless in its grip.

All at once their flailing about ceased, cut short by an invisible power. Their bodies turned rigid, shaking all over, teeth chattering between clenched jaws as a surge of incredible energy coursed through their unbroken chain. Like stiff rag dolls in the teeth of some huge invisible dog, they were shaken into submission, played with before the jugular of soul was severed in one last heartless slash.

When at last they were released, they fell limply back into their chairs, humbled and unresisting, spent and conquered, hands still locked together.

In the center of the table the space inscribed by the circle of their joined hands now began to glow and pulsate with a strange energy field. The black abyss Madame Le Beuc had postulated in her opening dramatics had suddenly grown into a giddying reality for the six: They felt as if they were floating together, suspended in space and time, surrounded by an unknowable emptiness, a vast nothing devoid of all light and life that was created of endless cold and unfathomable distance. Their only hold on the physical world lay in the contact of hands around the table, and the newly created reality which occupied the space between them, riveting their attention to it as if it were a life boat on this dark and sucking sea.

This luminous central field slowly congealed, forming a darkly gleaming, violet-hued orb some twenty inches in diameter, which hovered just above the reflective surface of the black satin cloth covering the table. Within its crystalline depths small shapes began to materialize, rapidly turning into three-dimensional holographic images - six tiny white marble statues caught in frozen poses of life. Slowly these figures began to take on color, life and movement, and a gasp emerged from the onlookers: the tiny statuettes were living replicas of themselves, miniaturized and trapped inside this crystal ball.

A weight pressed in on Marija, Joe and the others around the table, taking their breath away, making them unable to speak or move as if caught in a nightmare from which there was no waking. At that same instant their tiny alter egos within the sphere burst fully into life and began beating frantically against the invisible walls of their glass prison, mouths open in silent screams of terror and protest.

This fruitless thrashing stopped as abruptly as it had begun, almost as if the little clones were being turned on and off by a switch. Manipulated like marionettes, their hands now dropped slackly to their sides, heads flopped forward on the tiny necks. Five of the Lilliputian figures began to recede into the background, growing tinier and tinier within the transparent ball, gradually fading from view completely. At last only one subject remained, alone and exposed: It was the medium, Madame Le Beuc.

The background began to fill in by degrees around her, a sunny parlor that looked vaguely familiar to two of the other séance members. Soon another female figure manifested within the blue haze: tall, big-boned and handsome, MJ recognized the woman as Ms. Salvida, the other medium.

Instantly the scene changed; the two middle-aged women were now in another room, a bedroom, and both were totally naked. The dark-haired woman's hands were on Mildred's droopy breasts, gently teasing the soft pink nipples into a tense erectness.

Her wide unpainted mouth bent to kiss first one, then the other, lifting the pendulous bosoms to her lips. Mildred Spencer, sitting at the séance table, emitted a strangled choking sound and tried to close her eyes while her tiny alter ego in the globe continued wriggling happily under the other woman's touch.

The two embraced, moving together for a time in each other's arms, swaying sensuously to music heard only in their hearts. Then they kissed, gently at first but soon harder, more demanding, holding each other tightly. Without breaking the embrace they sidled closer to the bed and, as one, folded down upon it.

After their completion the orb went black, and all eyes around the table were pulled against their will to look at the medium's shame. She looked back at them, her face deathly white beneath the black splotches of running mascara, the glaring pink rouge on her cheeks. One of her false eyelashes hung ludicrously from her upper lid. Her painted mouth opened and closed noiselessly. Marija tried to give her a supportive little smile, but as soon as she did so the inky depths outside their circle darkened appreciably and a feeling of danger crept up all six of their spines as one, fear edging away all sympathy.

Their hands clutched even more tightly to one another, each member torn between wanting to flee the awful revelations that might be in store from this self-created world between them, yet more afraid of the horrors that lie beyond the safety of their unbroken chain.

Suddenly their heads were jerked back to the maleficent orb, which had glowed once more into life. Within its gloomy depths another figure slowly materialized. This time it was the professor, but a much younger, stronger, more virile man than the withered alcoholic who shared their table tonight. His step was light, jaunty almost in the early afternoon sunshine. He carried a small bouquet of daisies in his left hand, the soft Southern California winter sunlight glinting off the yellow band that encircled one of the powerful, dark-skinned fingers.

The tall handsome man could have passed for a college athlete instead of a thirty-nine year old as he skipped up the flagstone walk to his comfortable ranch style home in North Hollywood. His uncanny light green eyes sparkled as he carefully opened the door, tiptoeing over the threshold, the flowers behind his back.

Inside the dim interior, the man's smile faded as he struck a listening posture, the flowers quietly discarded on the small oval entry table just inside the door. He took a careful step or two forward, pausing, listening again. The swarthy face hardened, turned cold and blacker still. The powerfully built body moved forward with the stealth of a stalking tiger, around a corner, down a narrow hall.

The silence of the scene was broken by a sobbing, grunting noise at the far end of the séance table, the old black man suffering for what he knew was to come, and for his inability to get to the flask of liquid amnesia that had been his escape from these memories for the past fifteen years.

Back in the globe a bedroom door was being flung open, the man and woman within caught in the classic pose - shock, guilt and fear on the woman's face as she scurried to pull the sheets over her naked body, while the man - a white man even paler in his fright - was grabbing for his discarded trousers and shoes.

Leroy Turner's rage was directed towards his wife alone: The intruder, the usurper, had become invisible, insignificant. He skittered all but unnoticed past the cuckolded husband, heading for the open door, his pants and shoes clutched protectively over his suddenly flaccid penis.

The black man closed the door behind him, a quietly calculated movement as deadly as that of an aroused cobra.

The woman had begun to whimper, her mouth moving in an attempt to placate, to cajole, to explain with a quivering smile, begging his forgiveness, his mercy.

Leroy moved forward, jaw set, eyes brittle. A huge hand drew back and swung with the force of a piston, flat and hard against the woman's delicate cheek, spinning her head around and lifting her half out of the bed. The other hand snapped out lightning fast, striking her on the opposite side of her face before she completed her fall, slamming her back in the other direction. Again and again he hit her, the blood from her split mouth and ruptured eardrums that soon covered his palms only serving to increase his rage.

Her screams ceased after the fifth or sixth blow; after three or four more he stopped altogether because she was no longer feeling the pain he wanted to give her.

He strode into the bathroom, yanked her orange rubber douche bag from its hook in the shower, and filled it at the sink. He carried it back into the bedroom, holding the black plastic end piece high enough to keep the cold water from spraying out onto the carpet. Standing over his wife's bloodied, unconscious form that was sprawled across the bed, he smiled coldly and lowered the hose, drenching her face and upper torso until she sputtered, groaned and returned to a semiconscious state.

Grinning broadly now - a feral grimace -he pulled the sheets roughly from her lower body and stood looking down at her nakedness, the full beautiful breasts that had been his pillow these past two years, the flat young belly, the coffee-colored thighs. And the matted pubic hair, wet with some other man's need, wet with her own filthy desires. The smile faded.

"You bitch! You fucking traitorous bitch," he hissed, lifting his hand to strike her again. But he checked his swing, looking at the empty douche bag in his hand, an evil glint coming into his eyes.

Striding back to the bathroom, all coherent reason and control gone, only hate a revenge filling his mind with sweet poison, he began rummaging through the medicine chest and cupboards, then through the cans and bottles of housecleaning products beneath the vanity cabinet. He pulled out a white bottle of chlorine bleach, gazed at it somberly for a moment, then poured its contents into the orange rubber bag. He moved mechanically back into the bedroom where his wife still lay moaning and weeping, her legs splayed open. As her screams began, he pushed one of her lover's dirty socks into her mouth, leaned an elbow on her chest to hold her down, and continued to let the burning chemical flow into her until the bag was empty.

This view in the globe gradually faded, then one final scene appeared: Leroy Turner sitting on the hearth of his cold dark fireplace looking old and beaten, the bottle of Jim Beam in his hand nearly empty. He did not look up, his head did not turn as the paramedics pushed his wife past him on the gurney; he did not see his wife give him one last despairing look as she was wheeled out the door into the waiting ambulance. And he did not look up, nor turn his head, at the sound of the approaching police siren, the pounding on the door, the handcuffs being placed on his wrists.

The sphere darkened, obliterating the last vestiges of Leroy Turner's story. Five heads were once again turned as one to stare unwillingly at what remained of the man at the foot of the séance table, but before their horror and revulsion could be moved to pity an insane tittering swept through the void behind them, the pitch growing and fading in a Doppler effect, that mocked their compassion and reminded them of the unseen powers that still surrounded and controlled them. Duly warned, it slipped back into the abyss, as the next figure appeared in the crystal globe.

It was the miniaturized form of Mrs. McGilvroy.

"Now what could this dear old woman possibly be concealing," the priest thought with a sense of anguish, trying to give her hand a comforting squeeze. Immediately he had his answer.

She lay curled in bed in her little room in the rectory, moaning quietly and writhing inside her prim cotton gown, her sins hidden under the faded yellow coverlet that sheltered her from their view. Cruelly, the covers suddenly vaporized, the gown disappeared, exposing her plump wrinkled body for all to see.

A loud sobbing was heard at the other end of the table, the sound of a heart breaking as the globe went on to display her secret in telescopic close-up and vivid detail.

After a moment, another picture came to the forefront to overlay the first scene: it was a portrayal of the images in her mind, the sexual fantasy she was playing out to bring herself to climax.

"Oh no, oh please God, no not that!" the real Mrs. McGilvroy cried out, trying to wrench free from the circle, to stop this somehow, to run if nothing else. But her head reeled suddenly to one side as a loud slapping sound punctuated the air; red wheals immediately appeared on her pale wrinkled cheek. Her head was jerked cruelly around to face the globe, held there stiffly in an invisible grasp, while her wide-open eyes drained a continuous flow of helpless tears onto the black satin tablecloth.

Within the secondary scene another miniature of her had appeared, but of course in her fantasy it was a younger, firmer, more voluptuous self that lay there in the pristine sanctity of her bedroom awaiting her lover. Suddenly the door was flung open and the priest stood before her wearing only thin cotton pajama bottoms, a prominent bulge tenting the fly. With a swift sure movement he yanked the blanket away. Two strong brown hands took hold of either side of her gown, tearing the fabric from her naked, trembling flesh, She lay there, powerless to fight the strength of his passion while his soft mouth covered her neck with kisses, his beard scratching her breasts, his sharp white teeth biting at her flesh until her back arched involuntarily up to meet him. The cruel globe played out both sides of the encounter, the fantasy and the reality, in intimate detail all the way to its completion.

Once more the remaining five felt their eyes being forced toward the member of the group who'd just been defamed, making her humiliation complete, but this time - with a small bleat of rage - one refused. Marija, with a sudden surprising strength of will, wrenched her eyes from the housekeeper's unbearable humiliation. Her defiance was instantly met with a tremendous roar of rage from their unseen malefactor. A bolt of white fire hurtled around the table, encircling them. A terrible gnawing pain shot up their spines and into their foreheads, exploding behind their eyes in a brilliant burst of heat, a crazing agony. The chastisement lasted only a few seconds, all that was needed. The fire receded and disappeared into the blackness, silence resumed her reign, the hideous little theater regained their attention, dominated their wills...and no one chose to protest further.

The priest's ruination was next.

It unfolded relentlessly in three-dimension detail, the incident of his deepest sorrow and shame his part in the death of the young woman he had loved thirteen years earlier.

He'd known the brakes in his car were faulty, but two or three beers made it easy to dismiss the danger as he wheedled his beautiful Cathy to make a cigarette run so he wouldn't miss any of the Raider's game on TV. A few minutes later Cathy found herself in slow-motion terror, pumping frantically at the unresponsive brake pedal as the ghostly lights of the oncoming truck loomed up through the coastal fog directly ahead. Her slender arms flew protectively over her eyes, which were now bulging in horror; then came the splintering impact, shards of glass imploding lazily inward, puncturing her face and hands in slo-mo, the bright red arterial blood and darker venous spewing out in thick, swirling streams from the gaping wounds. The steering wheel folded upwards against her body as it crushed into her ribs and sternum, its metal column proceeding on without it like a jagged pile driver to puncture her abdominal wall and the soft organs within; the full sensitive lips opening to release her final scream, and disgorging instead a belching sound of blood and death.

"Damn you!" came a choked whisper from the tormented priest at the satin-draped table. "God damn you to eternal hell for this."

Laughter was heard in the darkness: _where do you think this is coming from, fool?_

With callous indifference, the drama proceeded to a series of cameos at the graveside services: Cathy's mother collapsing in grief beside the precisely hewn rectangle of emptiness in the wet dark earth that waited to receive her daughter's body; a haunting image of the tiny closed coffin containing the unborn male fetus - _my son, my son_! - lying in silent accusation within the larger satin lined box beside his mother, whose heavily made up face could not fully disguise the deep flesh wounds now closed with super-glue; then the dirt, falling in slow heavy shovelfuls into the hole - _thump...thump...thump._

The final scene was at the graveyard later that night, the man alone in the darkness, hunkered down beside the fresh soft dirt of her grave, the glowing ember from his cigarette \- the cigarette for which Cathy had died - reflecting the deadness in eyes.

He flicked the butt away in a fiery arc, suddenly falling to his knees in a paroxysm of anguish, beginning to claw at the damp soil, aching to hold his love close one last time.

A shooting star passed overhead, like God flicking away His cigarette butt in mockery of Mike's pain.

"Fuck you God!" he cried out in his agony, the middle finger of his right hand gesticulating wildly at the sky. He collapsed back onto the ground, clutching the cold earth in his arms, burying his face in its musty, unyielding darkness, his body convulsing with the unspent tears. After a few minutes his hand found his fly, found release that way. The globe showed it all.

Back in the séance room Mike's entire body was heaving with the same racking sobs, as much from having his sins, his sacrilege, exposed so vividly before this company of friends and strangers as from the pain of reliving the episode.

But the unfeeling blue orb merely blinked out, already bored with the destruction of the priest and anxious to proceed with its next subject, who immediately began to appear in its cool depths.

It was Marija's turn. She gasped, knowing instinctively what was coming. The demon barker of this lurid sideshow had read her deepest thoughts and found the one thing she most dreaded having exposed, and that was exactly what now began to develop within the mini-world before them.

It was a scene of rampant, uncontrolled gluttony - a feeding frenzy almost - the slender, attractive, well-groomed professional woman almost unrecognizable in a huge dowdy housecoat she had donned for the occasion, standing before the open refrigerator in the kitchen of her campy Victorian flat and compulsively gorging herself on unbelievable quantities of chocolate cake, fried chicken, potato salad, left-over pasta... seemingly anything she could get her hands on that was edible.

The ensuing event was even more damning: MJ locking herself in her spotless, white-tiled bathroom, running bathwater to drown out the sound, then sticking a manicured finger down her throat and vomiting all that just-eaten food back up again; heaving out huge lumpy volumes of the partially chewed and barely digested feast with a horrid, choking, retching noise; spattering bits of it on the sides of the bowl, the toilet rim, the floor, with splash-back of the slimy vomitus landing on her face and arms and clinging to the strands of her lustrous dark brown hair.

Once her stomach was emptied she began to wipe away all the evidence with a practiced, businesslike air - scrubbing the toilet and surrounding floor with a strong-smelling disinfectant. Then she stripped off the soiled robe, turned up the shower hot and steamy, and scrubbed herself from head to toe, including shampooing her hair twice, until all traces of the food residue and its odor had been vanquished, her secret safe.

The center stage dimmed for a moment, just long enough to allow a tiny surge of wishful thinking to push back the blade of despair from Marija's heart; then it gleamed wickedly and went on to show three, four, five more similar incidents in rapid succession, enough to obliterate all pretense that the first had been an isolated occurrence and make it abundantly clear that the woman went on such binge and purge cycles regularly, knowingly, even ritually.

Marija hung her head in shame, sickened with herself. She'd never realized how awful she looked with her face contorted over the porcelain bowl, vomit spewing from her gaping mouth, running down her chin and hands. Even the expression of glaze-eyed avariciousness as she stuffed her face was disgusting, and the knowledge that the others had seen her this way, knew the truth, saw what a horrible greedy pig she really was, and to what perverse lengths she would go to maintain her figure, this was unbearable. She could never face them again, never...especially not Joe, nor Mike either for that matter. God, the expression of horror and revulsion that must be on their faces!

But though she fought to resist, her head was lifted back up, her eyes forced to meet the others around the table. Surprisingly she saw only compassion in those faces, that and love. She flushed and crumbled under the burden of their understanding.

The next instant the room went completely black, and a fierce rumbling began to shake the air about them, rattling the table, the chairs. Out of the inky depths above Marija's head two large almond-shaped eyes blinked open, their fiery scarlet irises slashed vertically with black pupillary slits, their gaze as cold and dead as that of some ancient reptile. A wide lipless mouth opened beneath the eyes, emitting a fetid rush of heat, a dark exhalation smelling of some warm, overripe pocket of decay, a sick wind that blew their hair around, burnt their faces, parched their lips, made them gag: _Dragon's breath._

Marija was the only one who couldn't see the demon appear behind her, but then she didn't need to, she already was too familiar with the touch of the beast. Her mouth opened to release a scream, and as it did she could feel her features begin to change. Her nose felt thicker, wrinkly; her cheeks grew heavy, pushing up against her eyes and making her squint. Her ears tickled and didn't feel right, misplaced somehow, too high on her head; and her neck thickened, became weighty against the back of her skull. She tried to jerk her hands away from the others to feel her face, but they remained locked into the unyielding grip of the two men on either side of her.

Now the looks of horrified revulsion she'd expected to see on her companions' faces did appear, looks of open-mouthed fear and disgust unanimous among the five seated around the oval table. And suddenly she didn't need to feel her features to know what she'd become.

She opened her mouth once more to scream, but the noise she emitted was a terrified, high-pitched animal squeal instead. At the sound the red-eyed demon behind her exploded into a deep rolling laughter, an enormous amusement that taunted and tormented the woman even further as its gleefulness infected and corrupted the others as well, causing them to first snicker, then chortle, then erupt in helpless uncontrollable laughter at the bewildered swine face now bulging stupidly above the collar of Marija's white silk blouse.

After a few moments even the woman herself could not resist the infectiousness of their laughter, but the noises she made came out as squeals, grunts and snorts, setting the rest off into new gales of hilarity, tears pouring from their eyes.

Finally the insane laughter was cut off abruptly, as if by flicking a switch. The beast blinked its crimson eyes once, and Marija's normal features were restored; it blinked again, and disappeared from view like the fabled Cheshire cat, his attention now turned wholly to the imminent destruction of his last untarnished guest.

Joe's image rapidly took shape in the mystic ball, a Joe barely recognizable to those present in the gangly body of a pimply faced adolescent, walking through the starry quiet of a country night. His footsteps echoed hollowly on the deserted sidewalk of the small rural town near his home. Joe's jaw was set in a determined grimace, but his young eyes belied uncertainty as he reluctantly searched the darkened side streets for his father's pickup truck, sent by his eternally ailing mother to find and fetch her errant husband home.

A neon sign above the deserted truck stop at the edge of town flashed on and off, beckoning him forward. _Maynard's Diner - Good Food - 24 hours_ it repeated over and over in bright red letters, though the parking lot was empty at this hour. He entered quietly, looking around: there was no one in sight, although a jukebox blared some twangy number about dogs, trucks and wayward women, and a couple of half full coffee cups sat on one of the formica tables in a darkened corner, their contents still steaming.

He was about to leave when he heard a strange noise coming from the back of the restaurant. As he tiptoed through the swinging doors into the waitress station, a soft moan could be heard coming from one of the dry storage rooms at the rear of the building.

Pushing open the door, he stopped as if struck, his face drained of all color. His father, down on hands and knees on the dirty concrete floor, turned to stare up at the boy, exposing in that movement the secret area between a pair of full white thighs that belonged to the woman who had been straddling him. Her short waitress skirt was hiked up over her ample hips, her panty hose dangling in a lumpy mass from one white-shod foot. She relaxed back onto the large sacks of flour, grinning lazily at the teenager as she ruminated on a big wad on Juicy Fruit gum.

"What are you doing here," his father hissed furiously. "Get out!"

Joe began backing away, but the woman's voice had already risen in protest, stopping him. "Wait a minute honey....Bret, listen, if he leaves now he might..." and she whispered something in his father's ear. The older man listened thoughtfully, his hard anger softening slightly, to be replaced by a slow crafty smile.

"C'mere son." It was spoken gently, but it was a solid order, and Joe'd already had too much cuffing from this man during his young life to even consider disobeying.

"How old are you now, son, fourteen? Fifteen?" the man asked, rising to put an arm around the teenager's bony shoulder.

"F-fifteen, sir," answered the desperately embarrassed boy, his eye riveted to the blatantly exposed pubic area of the waitress, who'd reclined again on the flour sacks, casually spreading her legs.

"Ever had a woman, son?" his father inquired lightly. Joe couldn't answer.

"'Bout time you became a man, don'tcha think?" Let's see if you've got the equipment." He reached his big calloused hand down and gave Joe's crotch a hard squeeze, feeling the already potent erection there.

"Hey Maggie," the man sniggered; "the kid's already got a hard-on for you."

"Oh yeah?" She smiled lasciviously, chewing on her gum. "Let's see it."

"Take your pants off boy," the burly man ordered genially. Joe froze, his erection softening.

"I said drop 'em," the father snarled, yanking down the Levi's from Joe's slim hips.

"Not much of one," pouted the bleach blonde, looking at his drooping organ; "but ol' Maggie can fix that up. Come here, honey." She wagged an index finger at him.

His father's hand was on his back, pushing. The blushing youngster stumbled forward, tripping over the pants around his ankles and sprawling clumsily across the hard, damp concrete floor. When he raised his head he found himself face to face with that secret flesh, so close his nose was almost touching her skin.

The woman and his father broke up at this, collapsing in raucous guffaws while Joe's ears burned hot and red. He tried to get to his feet, but a soft pair of hands grabbed the sides of his head and a husky voice said low in his ear, "You're not going anywhere, are you honey?"

He looked up to see Maggie's face bent over him, her eyes glowing with an inner fire. "Lick it for me, won't you baby?" She said softly, a pleading lilt in her voice.

"Huh?" the adolescent responded stupidly, shocked and confused.

"Lick it, baby; just lick it a little," she breathed, shoving his face into the soft hot sweetness. His tongue reached out, tentatively at first, then with more certainty as she moaned and pushed against him. Suddenly she grabbed his hair even harder, pressing his head fully into her, moving her hips wildly against his mouth.

"There, there, there," she cried. "Oh God, oh!" She shrieked, gave one last drawn out cry, and fell back against the four sacks, breathing in deep shuddering sighs.

"You been givin' him lessons, Bret?" she teased between gasps, opening one eye. But Joe's father was lost in a lust of his own, his hand moving on his organ, eyes unfocussed.

"Look baby," she said, turning the boy's head with her soft palms; "let's watch your daddy getting off."

Joe did watch, alternately fascinated and repulsed, unable to turn his gaze away as the tension in his own tortured loins grew ever more demanding.

When the older man had at last climaxed in a grunting, doubled over spasm of release, the woman turned her attention back to Joe, whose not yet fully developed penis was protruding from beneath his belly, swollen and distended. She smiled, bending forward to tease it gently with her tongue, and he felt an almost unbearable pressure coursing up the underside of his groin. Her full pink lips closed over the tip, moving it in and out of her mouth only once, and he exploded from every cell in his body.

As the roaring of blood in his ears slowly subsided, he heard another roar replacing it, the roar of laughter from his father as Maggie spat and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.

"Quick little rabbit, ain't he," she said, and dissolved in a fit of jeering giggles.

"Get out of her little rabbit," his father said, slapping Joe's bare behind. "And keep your mouth shut, hear? You're as guilty as I am now, and don't you forget it!"

"And don't guilt just feel _good_ , honey?" Maggie taunted bawdily. Their laughter joined the confusion of pain and pleasure still churning through the boy, the guilt of having betrayed his mother and the hope he might have a chance to do it again.

As the globe once more darkened, the others around the table again tried to avert their eyes from the subject of humiliation, and even from each other. But this time it was more to hide their embarrassment at the secret arousal they were feeling, from the scene that had just played out, than from any concern for Joe. The room felt suddenly too warm, their clothes too tight.

And the evil presence that controlled them slithered noiselessly through the surrounding abyss, grinning at his triumph.

Now.

The orb ignited into new life with shocking suddenness, the six tiny figures re-emerging in its center to play out the too-human secrets of their mortal counterparts who remained trapped in their chairs around the séance table, unable to escape or prevent the show.

This time, like a thing gone wild with evil, the globe began portraying every sordid hidden act each one had ever committed, even their fantasies. It was a collage of man's weaknesses, his depravities, his hungers, guilts and shame. Even those incidents they might have considered normal looked perverted and repulsive when put on gross display for all to view.

Most of the scenarios were sexual in nature, and gradually - under the continuous barrage of stimulation - the six found themselves changing in their reactions to it. Where at first they had been embarrassed and repelled, they soon began to experience a growing curiosity and finally a perverse attraction, wanting to take in every detail. At the same time an increasing hunger took hold of them physically, even as their minds protested and morality cried out against it.

They knew they were being used, manipulated, defamed by flesh that was no longer in their control; yet as their miniaturized alter-egos provided the visual stimuli their bodies responded, writhing and moaning: Their palms sweated against each other's grip, trying to break free, aching to ease their individual overwhelming needs. And the more they gave into these feelings the stronger and more uncontrollable the urges became, and the weaker grew their inner protestations of innate decency. They were becoming what the globe portrayed them to be, succumbing to it, embracing it.

The beast hidden behind his shield of darkness smiled in satisfaction. Soon he could release them, soon they would be ready, so lost in desire that their first act would be one of mindless mass copulation, like a den of snakes at the height of mating fever. After that, they would be his completely: _She_ would be his completely.

Then, unexpectedly, a voice screamed out.

"Nemeroth! Ahriman! Lucifer! I..I command you, be gone! _Go_! In the name of Ei, in the name of Baal, I command you to **go**!

The voice, Madame Le Beuc's, had begun as an hysterical but fervent scream of supplication to the powers of darkness for aid, brought up from some inner resource of resistance she didn't know she had. But it ended in an agonized shriek of pain and fear as her head, caught in a viselike grip by a pair of furious unseen hands, began to twist to the left. Farther and farther - obscenely, scarily far - it turned on its eroded cervical vertebrae until, with a loud snap, it had turned completely around, facing backward on the neck away from the horrified gaze of the helpless onlookers.

Her body began to glow, surrounded by a reddish aura as the head continued to turn slowly through the rest of the cycle. As her face came back into view the rest of the company gasped: Mildred's eyes were bulging sightlessly from their sockets, her blackened tongue protruding grotesquely from her red painted cupid's-bow lips.

Blood-tinged saliva dripped from the slack hanging mouth and began to spray the satin tablecloth as the head continued to revolve on its broken neck, to pick up speed, to spin. The flabby neck twisted like a washrag being wrung out as Mildred Spencer's auburn-tressed cranium proceeded through five, six, seven more revolutions. On the eighth turn the forces of torque and pressure exceeded the resiliency of the flesh and the head flew off like a sodden shot put. The wall behind materialized out of the void in time to meet it, the sound as it smacked against the solid surface a sickening crunch. Blood from the severed carotid artery spewed onto the table in great gushing pulses as the woman's headless body collapsed forward; it poured from the jugular vein in dark read splotches along the wall and floor where the head had come to rest.

A fierce laugh roiled up from the depths of hell, joined by an insane tittering from the degraded souls of limbo who skittered nervously through the timeless mists beyond all finite places.

All at once a new voice - deep and commanding, yet at the same time wholly feminine in an unearthly way - arose like a foreign entity in Marija's throat and poured like thunder from her pale quivering lips.

"Iblis!"

The laughter stopped, movement ceased. Within the shadowy sphere a froglike face appeared, eyes glowering with a fiery crimson light.

"Iblis, persecutor of mankind, begone from this room!"

At the Vatican two medical professionals scurried for the large ward room where their famous patient lay. A monitoring device had just begun to wail loudly, signaling a sudden dangerous rise in the blood pressure of the frail holy man beneath the white sheets. Vials of medication and paper packages of sterile syringes were ripped open, the withered flesh punctured, veins filled with fluid medication to bring the bodily functions under control.

The froglike creature withdrew further inside the globe at Marija's command, metamorphosing into a familiar dragon shape. His serpentine tail flailed angrily across the inner sky, and a myriad of stars were created in its wake. He whipped the point of his tapered tail around in a show of defiance and anger, and the stars were drawn behind the movement in a luminescent stream, a dozen or more of them hurtling out of the orb to fall like burning splinters on the faces and hands of the onlookers.

"Iblis I bind you in eternal hell!" The woman shouted forcefully.

In a richly furnished apartment within the Vatican, a tall grey man of military bearing grabbed the sides of his temples in sudden agony. Queasy waves of hot and cold fear passed through him, then were gone. Momentarily shaken, he got up from the stiff little chair where he'd been reading and peered into the vanity mirror, pulling down on his lower lids, inspecting his tongue. Finding nothing amiss, he shrugged, shook his head and went back to his book.

Within the globe the dragon's tail whipped back and forth in total rage, drawing the stars into a funnel, a glowing maelstrom of highly charged energy particles.

"I, Lilith, command it!"

With a final burst of vengeance and hate the tail of the beast slued across the microcosmic violet sky, flinging the condensed tornado-like cluster of miniature stars into a laser stream of pure, intense power which shot out through the invisible walls of the disintegrating sphere, aimed for the heart of the young dark-haired woman. But her hand, suddenly freed from the grip of the men on either side of her, raised up, the palm extended in protection.

The deadly beam arced in its path, veering away from the opposing force of her will and into the forehead of the black man on her right. It hung there in the air, buzzing and sparking while the professor's body jumped and twitched as if impaled on a golden spike. Smoke began to curl upward from the singed, smoldering hole that had opened up between his eyes. As the beam went out in one final dazzling pulse of energy, Leroy Turner's body retched in a violent convulsion and collapsed to the floor with a heavy thud.

At that moment the paralyzing spell was lifted. What lights in the room still remained intact flickered on. Those who'd occupied the inky depths of the abyss returned to their own dimension.

The séance was over, the gambit had been made...but to whose advantage?

Chapter 12

Thursday June 15th

Rome

At the precise moment the séance guests were seating themselves around the satin draped table in Madame Le Beuc's run down parlor, more than seven thousand miles away Archbishop Luigi Magliano was slipping quietly out of his temporary quarters in the Vatican palace and into the chill, golden light of a Roman summer morning.

When the secret consistory had barred him from their middle-of-the-night conclave with the ailing Pontiff three hours earlier, he'd hung around the infirmary waiting for news. But once the tired and taciturn group of Cardinals finally emerged, they would reveal nothing of what had occurred within, other than to inform the physicians who had shared his silent vigil that the Pope had lapsed back into his coma and needed their attention.

Returning to his cold, barren room, the portly Archbishop had tossed and turned fretfully for the next two hours, his mind a turmoil of questions he couldn't quite phrase, before rolling out of the hard narrow bed in defeat. He'd showered, shaved the thick stubble from his cheeks and chin, carefully groomed and twisted his large, droopy mustache and - dressing casually in a navy cardigan and slacks - headed for the solace of a hearty breakfast beyond the city walls.

At that hour few people were about within the palace itself, but beyond its walls Luigi discovered a surprising number of visitors already milling about in the cool quiet gardens and broad avenues surrounding the Basilica. These early birds were mostly silent, stand alone or in little clusters around the grounds.

Perhaps news of the Pope's astonishing, if momentary, recovery had already reached the public somehow; or maybe it was nothing more than the daily growing concern of the faithful over the Holy Father's gradually worsening condition that brought them out at this hour in such numbers.

As he skirted the perimeter of the great circular Plaza of St. Peter, waling beneath the huge columned roof of the gallery that flanked the square, he noticed a flurry of media people and television camera trucks arriving via the central thoroughfare, emanating the nervous intensity that invariably sparked their actions when they knew something big was up.

The Archbishop quickened his pace, skittering through the arched portals of the colonnade and out onto a side street before he could be spotted and cornered for an interview. He was heading for a small neighborhood cafe where he often took meals when in Rome.

As he passed a corner newsstand he saw the reason for the excitement: the early morning edition of Il Messaggero blasted a red banner headline in three inch letters: _MIRACLE AT VATICAN._ Below, in smaller black font, it added: _Il Papa awakens from death sleep._

The nuncio handed a two hundred lire note to the sleepy-looking newsboy and folded the thin paper under his arm. Characteristically, even though avidly curious to find out what it had to say, he did not open the paper again until he was seated at a solitary table in the nearly empty cafe, his first cup of coffee at his elbow.

The article, he quickly discovered, was short on fact and long on speculation. "Reliable sources" within the Vatican had apparently contacted the news office shortly before press time to inform them of the Pope's sudden inexplicable return to consciousness from what had purportedly been a state of irreversible brain death. It mentioned a "secret emergency meeting" held in the Pontiff's hospital room attended by a half dozen or so "top Church officials" immediately following the miraculous spontaneous revivification.

The paper went on to speculate as to the causes for the Pope's spontaneous recovery, and the possible import of the secret consistory at his bedside, but it was obvious the reporter breaking the news had had little to go on, was not even aware - at least at the time the paper went to press - that the Holy Father had subsequently lapsed back into the deep coma, and was no better off than before.

Just then his breakfast arrived - three eggs swimming in butter, surrounded by four fat Italian sausages - and he set the paper and its concerns aside momentarily while he attacked his food.

Once finished, he reread the article carefully, sipping his third cup of black coffee as he scanned the write-up for hidden information. It contained enough medical data to lead Magliano to believe the "reliable source" might have been one of the attending physicians, though whether the doctor had called the newspaper directly or merely confided to a wife or associate who'd then leaked it to the press was uncertain.

On his return to the Vatican, the Archbishop checked in at the Papal Secretary's suite of offices, and was immediately ushered into the Cardinal's private chamber.

"I've been looking for you Archbishop!" The Secretary of State nodded at the folded newspaper in Magliano's hand: "Apparently though you've already seen it. I'll need you to handle the press personally today, and probably for the next couple of days as well: I'll be tied up." His abrupt manner, so unlike his usually kind and genial self, took the Archbishop aback.

He handed the startled Nuncio a typewritten sheet. "This is the basic text of a briefing you are scheduled to give the media today at ten AM. That gives you precisely," he paused, checking the gold Swiss watch on a chain beneath his vestments; "one hour and thirty-six minutes to prepare. I'd like you to read through this now so you can ask any questions that occur to you, and offer any suggestions for editing or rewording that you'd feel more comfortable with. When we have it complete I'll give it to Deacon Frascati to retype...he'll also run off copies for you to hand out at the briefing."

Archbiship Magliano looked down at the typewritten page in his hands and began to read. In a moment his skin paled and he felt a cold sickness wash over him. His knees gave way and he sat heavily in a nearby chair, continuing to read intently. _Quillans a cardinal??!_ The idea struck him as so terribly wrong that he found it hard to concentrate on the rest of the press release.

Its text, written in terse, unemotional prose, gave a chronological account of the previous night's momentous events in subdued understatement. It began with the "spontaneous revival" of the Pope at precisely 2:46 AM, followed by the subsequent summons to his bedside of the Secretary of State, the six Cardinal Bishops of Rome, the Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox churches, and the Archbishop of San Francisco - mentioning as an aside that these nine notables had been sequestered in the Vatican palace close at hand for the past few days at the Pontiff's request.

The brief went on to state that there followed a secret consistory lasting approximately 35 minutes during which Pope Marcus appointed the American Archbishop Robert F. Quillans a titular Cardinal of Rome. This was the point where Magliano's attention stuck. He read and reread the account but it stayed the same.

The Holy Father, the press release continued, then gave his Cardinals certain instructions regarding the administration of the Church and his own medical maintenance during his illness, before lapsing back into the deep coma.

The paper concluded by stating that a complete transcript of the Pope's message during this incredible meeting was being prepared from the tape recording made at bedside. This message - which contained "news of immense importance to the Christian world" - would be made public in a few days, in accordance with His Holiness's specific directives.

Magliano looked up at Cardinal Mendice. "I suppose there's no point in my asking for an elucidation of this last point?" he enquired.

"I'm afraid not," the secretary smiled sympathetically.

"Well then," the Archbishop replied; "I'm sure the news people will have a lot of medical questions on this: May I have Doctor Frederico present to field those for me?"

"Certainly, good idea!" agreed the Cardinal Secretary, relaxing somewhat now that the burden of public relations was being removed from his overwhelming list of responsibilities.

"Now, this part, about the members of last night's secret consistory having been sequestered here at the Pope's request: the reporters will surely ask how and when such an order could have been given, considering the gravity of His Holiness's condition almost from the onset..."

"Yes, yes of course," said Mendice. "Here, let me see that." He took the paper from Magliano, studied it for a minute, then scribbled something on the page and handed it back. His annotation consisted of a couple of succinct phrases explaining how the Pontiff had made this request from his bed just before slipping into unconsciousness five days earlier.

The Italian Archbishop glanced through it. "That'll do," he nodded, looking up before adding hesitantly. "There's one other point here though." He looked back down at the paper to hide his emotions, trying hard to keep his voice neutral. "Regarding the appointment of Archbishop Quillans to Cardinal of Rome, isn't that a trifle...irregular?"

"In what way, Archbishop?" the strained edge to the secretary's normally soft and patient voice had reappeared.

"I'm, I...well, having him present at his own nomination for one, rather than notified through a formal biglietto," Magliano suggested, feeling a thin film of perspiration begin to form on his brow. "The press will certainly have some questions about that...at least the more learned of them will. I just want to be prepared to answer them properly." He tugged at his mustache with an apologetic grimace. "Also they'll most likely ask where and when the formal public ceremony of investiture will be held, things of that nature."

"Yes," the white haired statesman cleared his throat, begging time. "Well, you may tell them that the date of the public ceremony has not yet been set." Magliano was making notes in the margin. "And as for the other irregularity you mentioned, just say it was done this way at the Holy Father's behest, and constitutes no more than a minor alteration of protocol which was necessitated by the unusual circumstances and gravity of the situation." He finished the statement with a satisfied air, pleased with the way it sounded.

As the thick ornately carved door to the Cardinal Secretary's chambers closed behind him, Archbishop Magliano gave one more cursory look at the rough draft in his hands and then, on an impulse quite foreign to his usual conservative nature, inserted the adjective "controversial" before the words "Archbishop Quillans" in the text. He quickly handed the paper to the secretary's assistant, Deacon Frascati, before he could change his mind.

While the Deacon was busy retyping and running off the final copies of the press release, Magliano scuttled to his room to change into something more appropriate in which to greet the media.

When he strode into the press room at 9:55 AM it was bustling with men, women, cameras, lights, and sound equipment; and filled with an electrifying buzz of excitement: Soft murmurs, loud chatter, a woman's voice raised in inappropriate laughter quickly cut off; the whirr of a camera, the squawk of a PA system being tested, the high-pitched skreel of feedback from a mike, and the pounding of his own heart.

A half hour later the conference was over. The media representatives had been only mildly obnoxious, accepting the information he'd imparted with a minimum of respectful nitpicking, laughing at his droll jokes. The Italian Archbishop was enjoying the euphoria of relief as he made his way back through a rear exit, heading for the office he'd been assigned for public relations functions, when a woman's voice, vaguely familiar, hailed him from a darkened corridor.

"Archbishop Magliano?" It was almost a whisper. He turned as the woman stepped out of the shadows. He immediately recognized the young reporter who'd accosted him and Patriarch Synarus at the airport a few days earlier.

"Ah, Signorian DiGuccione, if memory serves," he greeted her with a little bow.

"Why yes, Your Excellency," she stammered; "how kind of you to remember."

She'd toned down the makeup considerably he noted with fatherly approval, wondering if someone had taken her aside and given her a few pointers. She was also more polite, almost deferential in her attitude toward him now. The overall effect was to make her seem even younger, almost childlike in appearance, and disarming.

"How may I serve you?" he asked graciously.

"I, um, had a couple of questions occur to me in there," she indicated the briefing room with a wave of her pretty hand; "but I wasn't sure if it would be proper to ask, at least not formally, in front of all the others, you know. It's more a matter of personal curiosity... or perhaps just my ignorance," she shrugged with a little smile. "Besides, I wanted to be able to assure you that I would keep whatever you say off the record, if you wish."

He smiled despite himself: she surely was a timid creature. How could she ever hope to compete with that wolf pack in the other room? Anyway, what could be so problematic about a private interview? He knew how to say "no comment." He invited her to follow him back to his office.

Once safely behind closed doors, he turned to her. "You may ask your questions, signorina," he said, showing her to a chair and taking his place behind the large oak desk; "but your tape recorder must remain off. I also reserve the right to refuse comment, or to insist that any answers I do give are to be kept in strictest confidence. Are we agreed?"

"Agreed," she nodded, sitting primly on the edge of the stiff wooden chair; "So, my first question is about the new cardinal-designate, Robert Quillans."

"Ah," the Archbishop said, feeling a nervous tension begin to prickle his scalp at the very mention of the man.

"In the press release you used the word..." she shuffled through her notes, wanting to get it right; " _controversial_. May I ask in what way is he controversial?"

"Perhaps it was an ill-advised choice of words," Magliano hedged, truly uncomfortable now. He should have known better than to have included that dig at Quillans: It created a hole into which he himself was now in danger of falling. His neck turned hot beneath his clerical collar and he was starting to perspire...he just hoped it didn't show.

"Can't you give me a least a hint as to where I might begin to look for background data;" she wheedled coyly, blinking up at him; "some idea which of his activities or views might be considered...questionable?"

"He is head of the first and thus far only Roman Catholic archdiocese to knowingly and purposely employ an avowed and militantly outspoken homosexual as a parish priest," Magliano blurted, despite himself. "This is in direct contradiction to the 2005 decree against such vocation. His interpretation of the Vatican's instruction is questionable, in my opinion. Further, he's been quite vocal in his attempts to "modernize" the Church's stance on abortion, birth control and divorce!"

Magliano had done some online research regarding the Archbishop the past couple of days, trying to find reason for his instinctual distrust of the man. What he'd uncovered had now come spilling out with more vehemence than he'd intended, indeed more than he'd realized he contained. But his outburst seemed only to amuse the girl, who was madly scribbling on her notepad.

Magliano took a deep breath, getting hold of his emotions. "I do not wish to be quoted on this, Signorina Di Guccione - neither directly nor indirectly. I am merely pointing you toward the avenues for further exploration as you requested. Is that understood?"

"Perfectly, your Excellency You don't much like him though, do you?"

"Let's just say I'm of the old school," Magliano smiled faintly. "Now then, if there's nothing else..." This conversation was making him decidedly edgy; he rose from his chair to end it.

"No, not really," the brown-eyed woman sighed, getting up; "but would you correct me on one more thing, if I'm wrong?"

The middle-aged Italian shrugged noncommittally as he came around the desk, determined to escort the reporter out as rapidly as grace would allow.

"Doesn't Pope Marcus the Third also ascribe to some of those modernized views?" she persisted, moving forward under the gentle but persistent pressure of Luigi's hand against her back. "As a matter of fact, isn't he the one who authored the new policy allowing homosexuals into the ministry, at least as deacons, with a rather large grey area as to what is acceptable or not?"

"Yes," the Archbishop answered tersely, reaching for the doorknob. He'd been played; and it didn't help that she'd played him in areas that were deeply sensitive and politically dangerous.

"One last question, your Excellency," she begged, holding onto the doorjamb in quiet resistance. "It's been rumored that many of the more conservative clergy secretly opposed this new liberal stance by the church. Some even may feel that the Sacred College might have erred in their last Papal election. How do you feel about that?"

"I have no further comment," Magliano answered coldly, suppressing a sudden urge to shake the impertinent young woman. He opened the door wide and, abandoning all pretext of diplomacy, literally shoved her through it.

His last image of the reporter, superimposed on his mind in photographic detail, was her ostensibly innocent face betrayed by a cool spark of knowingness in the big soft eyes, a hint of sardonic smugness playing about the full sensitive lips. He shut the door on that image with a hard, angry snap.

"How dare she!" he fumed, pacing around the empty office. "What does she know of the burden of our faith and its tests?"

_How can a layperson ever presume to understand the conflict between one's profound desire to support our Pontiff_ , he brooded, _which the tenets say is the divinely ordained head of the Christian world, and the equally passionate need to defend the basic moral principles of our religion,_ slamming his open palm on the desk in frustration; _which that same leader seems, even from the grave, to threaten with extinction!?"_

He walked over to one of the tall leaded-glass doors that opened into a small private garden, and banged it gently with the heels of his hands, leaning his forehead against the coolness for a few minutes. He looked up at the ceiling beseechingly. "We're just the carpenters, Lord, not the architect. How can we know which is the right way?"

Then he leaned his arms heavily against the glass door and, much to his own astonishment, began to cry.

Unbeknownst to Magliano, deep within the vaulted caverns of the Sistine Chapel where a secret conclave - its sole purpose a sham ritual of election for the already preselected "Auxiliary Pope" was just getting underway - there was at least one other Catholic official who shared his gnawing concerns.

Cardinal Bertini, the energetic fifty-six year old Bishop of Frascati, had prayed fervently for divine guidance during the Mass of the Holy Ghost which preceded their procession to the conclave. But now that the moment was at hand, he felt inner doubts still eating away at his resolve to follow the Pontiff's edict as the divine will of God.

As Camerlingo it had fallen on him to oversee this special election, directing all preparations and managing its proceedings. It was also customary for the person holding this office to make a brief introductory speech before the first secret ballot was cast, and Bertini had spent the early morning hours following Pope Marcus's resurrection and subsequent relapse trying to compose a suitable message, one which proclaimed with awe and reverence the importance of the roles they were to play in this ongoing miracle.

But as the light of day broke, the metaphysical realities of the night, the dumbstruck wonder he'd felt following the miracle he'd witnessed, slowly dissipated until he was left not just with uncertainty but with a growing if unidentified alarm, one which intensified during the brief investiture ceremony this morning at which Robert Quillans was presented with his Cardinal's robe and ring.

He simply did not like the man.

Now he stood at the dais before the eight other Cardinals, tiny figures in the majestic nave, and tried to force the words of invocation from between his stiff dry lips. The words on the paper blurred in and out of focus as the document shook in his hands; he felt the pressure of the myriads of painted angels and saints looking down at him from all sides, Michelangelo's children, waiting in silent judgment on his decision.

"Fellow servants of God," he began; "we are drawn together here today under most unusual circumstances, to vote on an act which has no precedent in the history of our church." He sighed, gave a slight shake of his head, and crumbled the prepared text in his clenched fist. _So much for that,_ Bertini decided.

Looking up earnestly at his small elite audience he spoke now from his heart. "Bear that in mind while you are casting your vote today, I beseech you. Remember that the Holy Roman Church is far more than any one man, any one decree...no matter how great, how necessary or how expedient either that man or that decree might seem. Our religion was established on the Word of God, as communicated directly to His apostles through His only-begotten son Jesus the Christ. It was founded on sacred laws - moral laws - which must be upheld and enforced despite the pressures of ever-more corrupt societies and temporal desires if those we serve are ever to find a place with Him in heaven."

His eloquent voice had begun to waver, taking on a pleading tone as his eyes shifted nervously from one to another of the faces below, faces whose expressions ranged from the confused expectancy of those still waiting for him to give benediction to their task, to the horrified disapprobation of those who realized he was not going to.

"We must balance in our minds and souls these tenets which make up the bedrock of our religion against the unusual undertaking we have been assigned to complete today."

Quillans shifted uncomfortably in his seat: What the hell was Bertini up to? The election should have been a mere formality. Now this man was attempting to instill doubts in the minds of the conclavists. The Papal designate sent out a random mental intention, a thought seeking another mind willing to voice it as its own. He must stop this diatribe before it caused any real damage.

"What are you getting at, Cardinal Bertini?" It was the sharp authoritarian voice of Cardinal Falliano, Dean of the Sacred College. "Are you suggesting we disregard the true Word of God so that you can remain within the comfortable confines of your old outdated dogmata? Do you deny the infallibility of the Pope? Do you question the Doctrine of Divine Assistance, even after last night's miracle... for surely you must agree it was no less than that?!"

The tall, white-haired Bishop of Ostia had risen to his feet as he spoke, leaning forward in challenge, his voice raw with emotion. "Times change, Cardinal Bertini, and our religion must express that change, must adapt to the present needs of the people, if we are to remain a viable force in the world. Church membership is down, churches are being forced to close their doors due to lack of funds. Why do you think that is?!"

He turned his attention to the scandalized faces of the other Cardinal Bishops. Invoking his ultimate authority as Dean of the College of Cardinals, he called for an immediate vote. "Please retire to the balloting areas at once," he ordered. "The question before us is whether or not to respect the sacred directive we received last night," he cast a withering look in the Camerlingo's direction; "and elect Cardinal Robert F. Quillans to the position of Auxiliary Pope of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. A two-thirds majority, as for any Papal election, is all that is needed to carry the motion."

The Cardinals rose obediently to their feet, stunned by the extraordinary outbursts, and began moving toward their individual canopied thrones situated around the walls of the enormous chapel.

The close-cropped head of the American Cardinal bowed in apparent devotions within his booth, but a smile of tremulous excitement betrayed the set of his lips. A sharp eye stole secret glances from a slight opening in the filmy curtains hung across the back of his throne to ensure he would not be the first to emerge and cast his ballot. When three had gone before him he folded his own ticket lengthwise and moved slowly to the altar. He knelt, observing the ritual prayer, before placing his vote in the gold chalice that sat on the ornate table in front of the chancel.

It was more than a half hour before the last of the conclavists finally emerged from his canopied throne to complete the first round of voting.

The Secretary of State came ceremoniously forward, knelt and prayed for what seemed an endless time before finally removing the scrutinies from the large gold cup. He counted the ballots once, then carefully a second time while Quillans seethed beneath his cool demeanor, wanting to shriek in exasperation. At last the diminutive statesman moved to the center of the aisle and raised the chalice in his hands, facing them. "The vote is five ayes, four nays," he announced without emotion. "We have no decision in this ballot."

Quillans' grey eyes darkened and narrowed; he scanned the group angrily, trying to pick out the dissenters. Bertini, with his smug expression, was one, that was certain. Equally sure was the fact that Dean Falliano was not. Of the six remaining Cardinals, three had voted against his confirmation into office. He _must_ find out who they were before the next vote was cast.

He studied their faces without appearing to, just a quick glance to photograph the details of each countenance in turn. Then, closing his eyes as if in prayer, he'd bring the picture back for an intuitive judgment on what the expression conveyed. Cardinal Capione, the eldest of those present, appeared upset and bewildered; Cardinal Salini, bald and palsied, was open-mouthed in disbelief. Scratch those two, he quickly determined.

The other elderly Cardinal, Malagio of Belletri, was harder to read. Even after a second look Quillans couldn't be sure whose side the old man favored, or if he was even fully aware of what they were voting on. He could have cast a negative ballot simply out of habit, or in senile confusion. By the time Quillans gave up trying to figure him out it was too late to interpret the rest of the faces: Their initial reactions to the disclosure had by now receded beneath the practiced decorum of their holy office.

With only one more "aye" needed to secure his victory, the San Franciscan sought to find an area of wavering confusion among the remaining three Cardinals in question, one that he might turn to his advantage.

Almost at once the tall, scholarly Patriarch of Alexandria rose to his feet, signaling a desire to address the group. Quillans slipped a long, well-manicured hand across his upper jaw, concealing the involuntary display of pride that bent and parted his thin lips over the even, white teeth, an almost feral expression. It was getting easier all the time to control the wills of these high holy men, and he realized with some amusement how truly weak and uncertain in their faith they really were. He had no such doubts about his own powers, nor about the existence and strength of the One who gave them to him.

The Papal Secretary gave a formal nod of recognition to the Patriarch, who then turned his attention to Bertini. "May I enquire of our esteemed Cardinal Camerlingo," he asked in a thickly accented but exceedingly gentle voice; "as to the exact nature of his reservations about carrying out the Motu Proprio we were given by Pope Marcus last night? Before you answer, Cardinal Bertini," he added, holding up his long slender palm in a staying motion; "I wish to state that I personally do not find anything very threatening to the foundations of our Church in electing an Auxiliary Pope while the true Pope is too disabled to carry out the functions of his holy office. There have been a number of major changes in the administrative and electoral procedures surrounding the Papacy since its inception - some far more drastic and controversial, I think , than this current proposal - but the office itself has survived and continued to perform its duties in a unbroken line since St. Peter."

He was wagging his head solemnly, his left hand stroking his beard, a wise expression in his coal black eyes as he continued: "Is it, perhaps, not the election of an Auxiliary Pope, per se, so much as the personalities involved that troubles your heart?"

"An astute and very... _candid_ observation, Patriarch," Bertini admitted with a stiff bow, trying not to feel both irritated and defensive. "It is, in fact, this particular candidate's outspoken, almost maverick, stand on certain key issues of our religion that concerns me most."

"Specifically?" prompted Synarus, his face betraying no bias toward one view or another.

"Homosexuality in the priesthood, for one," Bertini retorted bluntly. "Cardinal-designate Quillans is known as the originator of the proposal to reverse the Church's moral position on this blatantly unnatural, hedonistic and unsanctified act.

And once the Church's position was relaxed, he immediately gave over a parish in his diocese to an avowedly homosexual priest, who promptly filled the services with an unabashedly active homosexual congregation!"

His voice had risen in anger as he spoke, this last statement nearly a shout. Now he fell back into an uncomfortable silence, as a murmur ran through the small gathering. Bertini felt the weight of their disapproval at his obtrusive attack on one of their own. Whether he was right or wrong did not matter - it was unseemly and unforgivable to have brought it up in this manner, right in front of the man in question, who offered no defense other than his humble, downcast expression.

The Camerlingo suddenly felt quite alone, estranged from his fellows, and in that isolation less sure of his own stand. He knew that in Roman Catholicism, homosexual acts were traditionally considered contrary to natural law and incompatible within the divine framework of sex as an act that is both unitive and procreative. But perhaps his interpretation was too strict, perhaps....

Quillans, quick to sense his advantage, sent another thought flying into a weaker mind to be expressed.

"I think in all fairness we should allow Cardinal Quillans to defend his views." It was the mellow, reasonable voice of Secretary Mendice.

"Thank you, Your Eminence," the American said, rising smoothly and with quiet authority. He looked from one man to the next, making eye contact, his expression warm, forbearing; he wanted them to feel good about him.

He was an artful, confident, convincing speaker. He was quickly able to move the Cardinal Bishops to compassion for the homosexuals, painting a picture of poor souls trapped inside bodies that betrayed their innate striving to be good Catholics.

"Jesus came to free the sinners, not the saints," he proclaimed in a resonant voice, nodding his head to draw his audience into nodding with him. "He can save those sinners only if we first open our doors to them." His eyes sought theirs again, finding the desired agreement, and even a certain degree of shame for any previously held uncharitable attitude they might have had.

He had them now, he knew it: Time for the coup de grace.

"As for the priest in question," he nodded toward Bertini with a conciliatory look; "to continue to refer to him as a homosexual would be to deny the power of the Holy Spirit in his life. It is true that at one point he found himself strongly pulled into the agonies of homosexual preference. But with the help, compassion and understanding of his own parish priest, whom he had served as an altar boy in his youth, he was turned from his self-destructive path and taken into the hands of God. At this point, forsaking all sexual activities - natural or "unnatural" - he entered the priesthood, hoping to save others like himself through his ministry. How, I might ask, can one still be considered a homosexual when one has taken the vows of celibacy as part of his Holy Orders?"

Once again he looked into the eyes of each Cardinal Bishop, his expression kindly, conveying tolerance and forgiveness for their lack of trust, their wavering faith. And he saw their eyes respond, their pupils dilate, the last shreds of doubt disappear.

The conclave recessed for a brief lunch, then the members returned to the primary nave of the Sistine Chapel and their separate thrones for a period of silent prayer. The second vote, taken at 3PM, was unanimous. The former archbishop of San Francisco had, in less than twenty-four hours, risen first to Cardinal and now to the top of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, head of the most powerful, most influential and wealthiest organization in the world.

Chapter 13

Thursday June 15th

San Francisco

After the investigating officer's final admonition not to leave the Bay area, Mike, Joe and Marija were escorted by a wedge of patrolmen through a barrage of popping flashbulbs, jabbing microphones and shouted questions to an unmarked car behind the precinct headquarters.

"Where to?" the driver asked impersonally once the doors were locked against the demanding crowd of reporters.

A television camera pushed up against the rear window. Marija cringed and turned her head into Joe's chest. Mike studiously ignored the intrusion, giving the driver directions to the parish rectory.

"I don't think they'll dare bother us there," he said to no one in particular.

The events of the last ten hours had left the trio totally spent, drained of all energy and wrung dry of emotion. The only thing any of them wanted now was a safe haven in which to rest, maybe talk it out, maybe pray; a period of respite to regroup their weary minds and spirits.

*****

The séance's horribly lethal climax seven hours earlier had so dazed them that for an indeterminate period of time they'd simply sat in place at the blood-soaked table staring out at the nightmarish reality that surrounded them, but seeing nothing.

Joe pulled out of it first, his eyes slowly bringing into focus the inert form of Mrs. McGilvroy slumped over the table across from him, her slack lips drooling a wet stain on the black satin cloth beneath her cheek.

"Mike!" he yelped, instantly snapping the priest out of his limbo. Muldoon gave an anguished cry on seeing his dear old housekeeper so stricken. He hurried around the table to her aid, fumbling for her wrist to check the pulse.

Marija began to struggle her way back to reality at that same moment, getting just far enough into it to begin a keening wail of hysteria. As the screaming increased towards complete loss of control, Joe turned and slapped her hard across the face, dissolving her screams into quiet wrenching sobs. He turned his attention back to Mike, letting MJ cry it out.

"She's alive!" the priest affirmed hopefully, lifting his head.

"I'll go call for an ambulance," Joe said.

"And the police," Mike added solemnly, nodding towards the mayhem the séance had left in its wake.

Joe turned towards the bodies of the other two members of their group, contorted and motionless on opposite ends of the room. At the head of the table the decapitated corpse of Madame Le Beuc was still draining blood from the severed arteries and veins of her twisted and shredded neck. Joe gagged and leapt backwards, the heel of his shoe catching the rung of his chair and sending him sprawling across the wet floor. As he lifted up on his elbows he found himself face to face with the bulging eyes and protruding tongue of the dead medium's missing head, which had rolled to the corner of the room. The similarity of this position to the incident in his youth was not lost on him, and a wave of hysteria swelled up inside him, a titter of laughter his or not his filling his head.

The strangled cry trying to force its way from his constricted throat sounded more animal than human as he scrabbled backward in horror, grabbing the wall for support. He tore his gaze forcefully away from the lurid fascination of death, edging around the far wall, and pressing hard against it as he slipped quickly past the corpse of the Professor. Smoke was still smoldering from the burnt round hole in the center of the middle-aged black man's forehead, looking like a third eye between the pair that were staring sightlessly out from their bloodshot rims.

The first officials to arrive on the scene were two uniformed patrolmen who'd been cruising the adjacent block when the call came through. The in-charge was a street-tough black cop who flashed his badge importantly as he bullied through the door, ordering everyone to remain seated. He scanned the dimly lit room with the bright wide beam of his regulation flashlight. As the spot focused on the headless medium his partner, a young blond baby-faced rookie, took one look and promptly threw his spaghetti dinner up all over the floor.

"Get the fuck outta here with that shit," the black cop said in disgust, chewing hard on the unlit cigarette clenched between his teeth. "And call for back up, if you think you can manage it between hurls."

He quickly moved the beam off the grotesque form, playing it slowly back and forth across the room until it illuminated the other body spread-eagled backwards on the floor at the opposite end of the parlor. "She- **it** , another one?!!" he exclaimed, coming around the table for a closer look. "Holy God, it's the Professor! You fucks killed the Professor!!"

His gun, a 38 special, was drawn before the words were fully out of his mouth, aimed indiscriminately at whoever might move first. At his direction Joe helped the still quietly sobbing MJ to her feet and joined Mike in assuming the position against the west wall. The officer rapidly cuffed the two men together then frisked each man in turn. He was beginning a more thorough search of the woman when the paramedics arrived to attend to Mrs. McGilvroy.

The ambulance was just leaving with the elderly housekeeper when the first wave of rumple-suited detectives and crime lab boys arrived, their portable spotlights igniting the room in a merciless glare.

During the body cavity search Marija had stopped her blubbering and lapsed into an apathetic, docile state, but when the dazzling lights exposed the blood pooled in ugly bright-red blotches, not just on the walls, table and floor but all over her own face and clothing as well, her horror once more erupted into an interminable mind-shattering scream.

"Shut that fuckin' broad up!" the detective in charge, Lieutenant Paul Grogan, growled to a younger assistant, shifting a stale cigar in his mouth. Just then a series of flashbulbs went off like firecrackers on Chinese New Year: It was the Chronicle's crime report unit, which had followed the detectives over from police headquarters, smelling a story.

"Keep outta my way, Rooney," the investigator warned, signaling for the two uniformed patrolmen to escort the reporter out. MJ had now stopped her terrible screaming and was crying wretchedly onto the blue polyester jacket of the assistant investigator, who patted her on the shoulder helplessly, looking embarrassed.

The older detective turned to Mike, looking him up and down suspiciously as he lit the well-chewed cigar between his teeth. "You really a minister?"

"Yes, sir."

"One of them flaky cults?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Are you with one of the _new religions_ that seem to be sprouting like fungus all over our fair city, or are you what I might call 'legit'?" he explained, rewording his question with carefully bridled sarcasm.

"I'm a Roman Catholic Priest," Mike answered with dignity; "pastor of St. Jude's Parish, over on Fell." He proffered a hand, which the other man pointedly ignored, continuing to look him up and down skeptically.

"You have anyone who can verify that?" Grogan asked, exhaling a cloud of noxious brown smoke.

"Certainly, call the parish, my housekeeper will...." He stopped short, remembering.

"What?"

"She was here tonight with us. They took her to the hospital just before you arrived."

"Fine, just fucking fine: Okay, Father - assuming for the moment you _are_ one - do you mind telling me just what the hell went on here tonight?"

"A séance," the priest replied. "It was being conducted for the psychological benefit of the young woman here. But something went wrong."

"I'll say!" the other man snorted humorlessly, looking around at the carnage. "So what happened, you guys get mad when the old phony and her shill wouldn't refund your money or something?"

"No, no, nothing like that," Mike shook his head, the memories assaulting him. Tears were starting to well up in his eyes, needing release from the turmoil of emotion which he'd been holding so tightly under control.

"It was Satan!" Marija cried out, startling everyone. "It was the devil himself straight out of hell that did this! And it's my fault he killed them, my fault! I'm so so sorry, Joe." Tears flowed freely down her face as she threw herself against Joe, who did his best to embrace her, even with one hand still cuffed to Muldoon. The young detective who had been comforting her looked relieved to be rid of the burden of her pain.

"You gotta be shittin' me!" the fat-jowled inspector exclaimed in disbelief, looking from one to the other of the suspects. Joe shook his head, stroking MJ's hair against his chest.

"She's telling the truth," he whispered. Mike nodded in agreement.

"Take 'em downtown," Grogan sighed. "Get their statements, check out their ID's, any wants, records, the works. I'll finish up here and be down by the time you're done."

The formal interviews at headquarters were private, polite affairs, almost reassuring in nature; after which their signed and sworn statements were taken apart word by word - belittled, poked at, discredited, questioned and re-questioned for hours - the three interrogators assigned to the case taking turns trying to break down the stories of the separated witnesses throughout the long night.

Mike was finally allowed a brief respite to phone the hospital at 4:30 AM, where he learned to his relief that Mrs. McGilvroy had suffered only a mild stroke. Her condition was listed as serious but stable. He begged to be allowed to see Joe and Marija to share the good news, but no such laxity in protocol was to be allowed. He understood the detectives were simply adhering to policy, some standard of investigative tech, but in his tiredness and frustration decided this was carrying it too far: He slipped into a sullen funk and refused to answer any more of their inanely repetitive questions.

Marija had already given up on trying to convince her inquisitors of her truthfulness a half hour earlier, laying her exhausted head on the dirty, cigarette-scarred table and mumbling: "I already told you that," through a steady drizzle of forlorn tears every time she was asked another of the poorly-disguised same old challenges to her credibility.

Joe, for his part, had resorted to sarcasm and irony after the first hour or two of the interrogation, changing his answers to an absurdity whenever he was asked something that he'd fully responded to already at least ten times.

It was after 6 AM when the trio was finally brought together in the senior detective's office, which stank of sweat, stale coffee, old cigar smoke and frustration.

"The preliminary reports are back from forensics and pathology," Grogan said, picking up a sheaf of computer printouts held together with an oversized paper clip. He sighed, moving his narrow, reddened eyes from face to face with the air of a man who has found a bag of burning dog shit on his front porch - wishing he could kick it but not wanting the stink on his shoes.

"I find what I read in here hard to believe," he admitted, lighting a cigar and slowly, carefully blowing the exhalation from his first good draw in their direction. Marija choked obligingly, her fist against her mouth.

"The medical examiner states that the male victim was initially suspected to have been killed by a gunshot wound, said projectile believed to have entered through the prefrontal area of the brain approximately one inch above the ethmoid....the bridge of his nose," he explained, looking up from beneath his heavy scowling brows. "However on closer inspection, the pathologist could find no signs of posterior egress by the offending particle - _meaning it had to still be in there somewhere_ -, nor did subsequent X-rays reveal the bullet to be lodged anywhere within any of the bones, muscles, organs or body cavities." He looked up with a wry smirk: "Gunshot wound with no bullet...cute trick."

"A craniotomy was then performed," he went on; "to allow an initial pathological survey of the damage to the brain tissue itself. The cerebral cortex was found to be virtually disintegrated, with a heavy layer of black residue lining the dura mater next to the skull; chemical analysis of this ash has not yet been completed. Additionally the normal composition of the white matter beneath the cortex had deteriorated into a pulp-like consistency, with deep lesions reaching into the brain stem. This is atypical of damage caused by gunshot wounds."

The detective raised his eyes to scan the three suspects who stood before him.

"In short, at this point we have no weapon, no known device capable of causing the kind of trauma responsible for the death of the male victim. As for the second victim, the female," he sighed again, looking like he'd bitten a worm; "the pathologist reports that it would have taken the combined strength of at least two, possibly three, heavily muscled male adults to have exerted the degree of torque - through brute force alone - needed to cause the type of damage observed on the remains."

His beady eyes peered out wrathfully from beneath the bushy brows, pinning them like moths. "Mysteriously no marks of any kind, no bruises from either fingers or a foreign device, were found on any part of the woman's head, neck or body. Cause of death is tentatively listed as decapitation by persons or objects unknown."

Despite the purposely grotesque way the detective was presenting his facts, Joe felt his tension beginning to ease as the coroner's report was read. Mike did too, nodding almost eagerly at this last statement as if to say: "See, that proves we're telling the truth!"

But Detective Grogan, catching the look, jumped to his feet, slamming a beefy palm against the surface of the desk with a solid thwack that made everyone in the room jump. He leaned his face to within an inch of the priest's and opened up.

"If you think for one second that this means I buy any of the cockamamie bullshit you people have been trying to shove down my throat for the past five hours, you are out of your ever-lovin' minds!" he screamed, cigar stained spittle pelting Muldoon's cheeks and nose.

Satisfied, he backed off, slumped against his gray metal desk and continued in a dangerously soft voice.

"As far as I'm concerned you fucks are it. All we've got to figure out is how you did it...and believe me, we will." He pointed his cigar at them threateningly: "Legally we can't hold you, not _yet_ : But don't even think about leaving town. I'll be in touch. Soon. Bet on it! Sergeant Brown!" he bellowed through the stenciled glass door; "is the police escort ready?"

"Yes sir," the man replied, poking his head around the doorway.

"Then get 'em the fuck outta my sight!" he ordered, turning away in disgust, his head surrounded by a cloud of cigar smoke, his bleary eyes staring off into space.

*****

The driver let them out in front of the white picket fence that enclosed the side yard of the church. As soon as they were within the rectory compound he sped away. Mike locked the gates to the driveway after him.

Inside, the little house felt strangely cold and empty; no Mrs. McGilvroy here to offer tea or cakes or a warm smile and hug. A lump came into Mike's throat. Marija excused herself almost immediately, desperate to shower and change out of her smelly, blood-spattered clothing.

Joe and Mike flopped disconsolately across the two overstuffed chairs in the parlor, a bottle of Scotch on the table between them. The men were too drained physically and emotionally to bother about social amenities or small talk, and the important things were still too emotionally charged to voice.

After a while MJ came back into the room dressed a fresh pair of jeans and a pale blue T-shirt, her damp hair turbaned in a fluffy white towel. She, at least, looked somewhat revived compared to the men, her eyes not quite as glazed with weariness as they had been earlier.

"Drink?" Joe offered, holding up Mike's bottle.

"I think I'd rather have coffee," she answered slowly, her voice tired and distant. "But don't get up, I'll make it myself."

While she was in the kitchen Joe went to take a quick shower himself. When he returned in a borrowed pair of Mike's denims - holding the over-large pants up with one hand, he found her tucked up in a corner of the sofa, sipping the hot brew moodily.

Silence hung like a heavy curtain between the trio, separating each from the others.

"Well, so...how do you feel?" Joe asked finally, throwing the question randomly into the air for whoever chose to grab it.

"Fine," MJ lied automatically: "Rotten," Mike groused, his words overlaying hers. They both laughed, but it was a strained sound. Joe smiled. Silence resumed.

Then, after a minute or two, Marija spoke up. "Actually, I don't feel as bad as I _think_ I should, under the circumstances. I'm kind of ...ambivalent. I can't get over what we went through, the horrible deaths of those poor people." Her shoulders and upper body trembled involuntarily as the mental pictures came into her mind, and she took a deep breath before continuing. "At the same time, I also feel unaccountable peaceful, like I'm really quiet deep down inside."

Mike tipped his head quizzically, interested, but not quite sure of her meaning.

She lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, letting the smoke out in a long lazy curl above her head, before continuing. She watched the smoke as she talked. Joe poured another drink; Mike stroked his beard reflectively.

"At first, after all those awful things that were shown in the glowing ball...I mean, the things about _me_ ," she clarified with a quick apologetic glance at the two men; "I felt so degraded, so sick at myself, I didn't think I could ever face any of you again. And then came the murders of the medium and her professor, our arrest and interrogations..." She took another deep drag off the cigarette, coughed -"First smoke in five years," she apologized - blowing the smoke considerately over her shoulder. "But now that it's over, I feel, I don't know, clean somehow. It's hard to explain." She tilted her head, chancing a brief glance at the priest. "It's like someone took one of those little suction tubes - the kind dentists use to suck up your spit - and poked around into all the dark dirty little corners of my mind, pulling out all the old secrets, the garbage and guilt I'd hidden away over the years - just vacuumed it all up and got rid of it."

Joe had been only half listening, but suddenly he tensed with an inexplicable excitement. The woman had just put into words his own experience, clarified his own feelings about the night. He too sensed an inner cleansing had occurred, felt a quiet new freedom at the core of his being. He looked over at Mike, saw a small movement of the lips beneath the heavy mustache, a movement that grew rapidly into a wide grin, as the priest also grasped the full reality of what the MJ was saying.

"You know what I just realized?" the priest blurted, drawing a sharp curious look from the woman; "This cleaned-out feeling, this is what a confessional is intended to accomplish when it's done honestly and completely. All these years, I feel like I've just been going through the motions, never fully understanding. "He shook his head: "I never knew, I just never knew."

Marija tried to smile, but ended up yawning instead.

"I think we could all use some sleep," the priest observed with a warm look at the bleary-eyed pair on the sofa. "Joe, why don't you and Marija use my bed; I'll just lie down out here on the couch."

Too tired to protest, the couple quickly accepted his offer and within moments of collapsing onto the small bed were fast asleep.

Mike crept into the room a few minutes later to get some fresh clothes, then took a long cool shower, scrubbing himself vigorously.

Once dressed, he lay down on the couch, a hundred questions darting like flies through his mind, each too fast, too erratic to grab hold of, yet too annoying to ignore.

_"Maybe,"_ he finally decided, rising to pour another half-tumbler of warm Scotch; _"it is not that a person's sins separate him from God directly, but that they separate him from himself, lowering his sense of soul-worth until he no longer recognizes his inherent oneness with the Creator."_

The drink remained untouched in his hand. He paced, rubbing the glass against his forehead, thinking about the confessional, the power it was capable of. _By erasing man's self-constructed barriers of fear and ego, confession of sins can actually rejoin men to God and to the rest of mankind, creating the spiritual brotherhood promised in the end times..._ if _done correctly._

Now that he fully understood its purpose, the priest resolved to make it the focal point of his pastoral duties. He would expand the confessional hours to at least four or five a day to allow ample time for each penitent to achieve true absolution. In his sermons, he'd push the need for confession in every sermon, every counseling session. He'd make it work the way it was intended.

Then he realized with a sinking feeling that he would probably never get the chance, not once the news of his involvement in the tragic séance reached his superiors.

As he lay back on the tattered sofa cushions, a solitary tear was shed, but he found he was too tired to cry. He briefly considered the irony: the demon's ploy to corrupt and control them had backfired, spiritually freeing them from their sins and making them stronger than ever, closer than ever. Yet in a perverse way, it had also succeeded, for in his final act of vengeance Satan had brought a public notoriety into their lives that ruined any chance they might have of putting that new awareness to good use.

Sleep was creeping in on Mike now. The last thought as he drifted off was that it might have all been worth it anyway. Marija had, in the séance, won her battle with Satan. She herself had exorcised him from their midst. God willing, the nightmare for her, at least, was finally over.

Chapter 14

Thursday June 15th

The Vatican

Soon after the conclave had unanimously approved Robert F. Quillans' appointment as the new Auxiliary Pope, the eight Cardinals had retired to their quarters for some much needed rest. At 6:30 that evening each was awakened by a personal envoy of the Papal Secretary, and after a period of private prayer and meditation all of them met again for dinner in the quarters of Cardinal Bishop Mendice.

In adherence to strict rules of etiquette, the meal itself was a quiet affair, broken only by polite conversation about the weather and requests to pass the butter and salt. Once the meal was concluded, however, the elderly statesmen hastily retired to the Secretary's comfortable sitting room to take up the urgent business at hand.

"Esteemed Cardinals," the diminutive man began formally; "today we have elected a new Pope - albeit a surrogate Pontiff, as long as Marcus still draws breath - who has taken on all the burdens, duties and responsibilities of that high holy office during this troubling time."

He looked around the room at the eight senior members of the Roman Catholic Church, most of whom were nodding in solemn agreement. Only Bertini still wore a look of mild reserve.

"The task that lies before us now is how to receive the pledge of obedience to our new Auxiliary Pope from all the rest of the College of Cardinals worldwide, those that we represented here today when we carried out this election in our limited conclave."

He paused, holding his palms up, a look of consternation on his pleasant pink-cheeked face. "I confess that I am uncertain how to proceed under such unusual circumstances, and am thus opening the floor to any suggestions you might have."

"Cardinal Secretary?" Quillans spoke up at once, rising from his chair; "I believe the first order of business, before we can notify anyone of anything, should be the choosing of my Papal name."

"Oh, oh yes, certainly," Mendice agreed. "I suppose we can't just continue to refer to you as the Auxiliary Pope, now can we?" (If there was the lightest feather touch of sarcasm in his tone, only Bertini picked up on it.)

"I have given this careful thought and prayer, and the name that came to me in answer to my supplications was _Sixtus_ : So henceforth I shall be called Pope Sixtus the Sixth, the two hundred and sixty seventh Pope in line of succession from St. Peter."

A murmur of surprise and approval ran through the little group. "Viva Il Papa!" one of the eldest burst out in quavery enthusiasm. "Yes, Viva Il Papa!" several others echoed.

"Thank you," acknowledged the newly crowned Pope Sixtus the Sixth with a little smile, remaining standing and thus tacitly in control of the meeting. "Now, as to the manner in which we should conduct the remaining required formalities of my election, I would offer the following plan: First, if it has not yet been done, complete, verbatim transcripts of the tape recordings made at Pope Marcus' bedside consistories should be written out, along with a detailed account of the chronology of events which led to and developed out of these consistories, including how the messages came to be recorded, what was done to carry out the directives and so forth. This task, I suppose, would fall under your purview, Secretary Mendice," He added with a deprecatory glance at the little Cardinal, "as you were the one primarily responsible for recording and administering Pope Marcus' requests after he was stricken, no?"

"Yes, that is so," Mendice agreed, bowing respectfully.

"If the missive is written in this manner," the Pope-elect continued, " with the Holy Father's directives in his own words forming the main body of the narrative, we need merely add at the conclusion that we, having carried out our part faithfully, now require the formal pledge of obedience from each remaining Cardinal in order to complete the Motu Proprio. This should leave no room for argument or discussion, nor time-consuming requests for further clarification. The Cardinals will instantly recognize that - based on the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility - my election is truly God's will and thus not open to question or debate."

"And how should this missive be delivered, Your Holiness?" asked Cardinal Falliano. "Should the Cardinals be invited to Rome for the reading of it, or should the message be delivered individually to each member by special courier?"

"Good heavens!" Pope Sixtus laughed, rolling his eyes: "This is the twenty-first century, Dean Falliano! We shall send messages by FAX to every Cardinal in the world just as soon as the text is prepared, instructing each one to pledge his obedience by return FAX in the same manner. Depending on how long it takes the Papal Secretary to have the original dispatch prepared, we should be ready by sometime tomorrow morning to let the rest of the world in on our good news."

He smiled broadly at the group of men, and even if such joviality seemed misplaced in the greater context, they all felt compelled to smile in return.

Sixtus continued to control the meeting, now directing the preparation and nature of the press release - to be identical in form and content to the missive being sent the Cardinals, with the exception of the requested pledge of obedience, of course. Instead, he instructed Cardinal Mendice, the release should conclude with the statement that the new Auxiliary Pope had received "immediate, enthusiastic, and unanimous acceptance by all members of the Sacred College," and that "congratulatory messages and pledges of obedience were pouring in from all corners of the globe, et cetera, et cetera."

"Tell them the ceremony of investiture will take place this Sunday in Saint Peter's Basilica," he concluded; "with the traditional blessing from the balcony to be given directly after high mass."

Inadvertent gasps escaped several of the Cardinals at this last reversal of form, this unheard of haste in the ceremonial proceedings.

"It is absolutely imperative, I assure you," Sixtus answered their unspoken disapprobation smoothly. "If you recall, we were instructed by Pope Marcus - as the voice of God - to _complete_ this election within three days. Complete means complete, all steps." He looked meaningfully into the eyes of each holy man in turn, ensuring each was fully with him, caught up in his aura of power.

"Set up the press conference for tomorrow morning, would you? Say, eleven AM?" He turned back to the Secretary, who was scribbling furiously on a little notepad. "Oh, and Cardinal Mendice..." He waited for the round cherubic face to raise and meet his eyes.

"Yes, your Holiness?"

"Conduct this one yourself, would you please? I don't want Archbishop Magliano handling any more of my press."

Within two hours the fax machines in the Vatican communications office were sending the messages abroad. Once the 149 Cardinals had been notified, the Secretary of State, by his own inspiration, directed the wireless operators to notify all the archdioceses throughout the world of what was happening, so that they might be prepared to share in and pass on the news of this miracle to all the bishops and priests in their domain before it reached them by way of the media.

Pope-elect Sixtus the Sixth - in the classic fashion of a politician on election night - retired for a short nap as soon as the first messages began to go out, then returned to the communications office a couple of hours later, just as the congratulatory acknowledgements and pledges of obedience began pouring in.

Shortly before 3AM one of the FAX operators \- eyes red-rimmed from visual concentration and lack of sleep - handed a print-out to Sixtus. "This one is from your old archdiocese, Holiness. It contains a personal message for you."

"They're **all** personal for me," the new Pope growled, taking the paper. The operator looked away to hide his expression. Sixtus lowered the rimless reading glasses from their perch above his forehead and began to scan the dispatch, skimming disinterestedly over the expected obligatory congratulations and utterances of respect and support. Halfway down the page his gray eyes stopped, a heavy scowl lowering his dark eyebrows, tightening his thin, tense lips. He read the remainder of the message slowly, thoughtfully...and by the time he'd reached the bottom of the page an ironic smile had replaced the frown.

"Deacon, please send a reply at once to Bishop Dumore, requesting he FAX me a complete transcript of the newspaper article he mentions in here. Tell him I await his immediate reply, and hold this line open for him.""

Less than twenty minutes later the return message came in. Pope Sixtus read it in silence, then sat down at a small desk and hastily scribbled out a reply.

"What time would it be in San Francisco right now?" He asked the waiting deacon.

"Six-thirty PM, Your Holiness."

"Still Thursday there, is it?"

"Yes, Your Holiness."

"Sixtus nodded and returned to his awkward, left-handed scrawl. Minutes later he stood and handed the paper to the waiting deacon. "After you send this off, you may reopen the FAX machine to receive the rest of my confirmations," he ordered, turning briskly away with a dismissive wave of his manicured hand.

Chapter 15

Thursday June 15

San Francisco

The insistent banging sound entered Mike's dream as an old weather beaten shutter slamming against the window frame of an ancient New England farmhouse. Outside the fragile shelter raged a violent North Atlantic storm, bellowing about the building like an enormous poltergeist, hurling the shutter in an angry rhythmic pattern against the wooden sashes. A wild rain pelted the glass panes in squalls that retreated for breath and then pounded on the panes in renewed frenzy. The whole house shuddered under the unrelenting onslaught, threatening to give way. Then a voice rose out of the maelstrom, intelligible words working their way into his consciousness.

"Let me in, Father Muldoon!" the voice insisted, followed by three more solid raps before repeating the command: "Let me in!"

"Okay, okay...coming," he called out, rising groggily from the couch in the dim twilight of the living room. He glanced at his wristwatch, struggling to focus. It read 7:25, but he had no idea if that was AM or PM. He felt disoriented, not sure if it was Thursday evening or had become Friday while he slept. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours that time had lost all usual reference points. He pushed the button on his watch for the date: 6/15... _still Thursday then_ , he sighed, tugging open the door.

Two dark-suited figures stood in the dusky gloom, hats partially shielding their faces. For a moment he thought they might be a new team of detectives back for more blood, or possibly a matched set of reporters that had managed a preemptive strike through the insignificant little barrier of his white picket fence; maybe even some opportunistic geeks out to make a little You Tube clip that would go viral on the world-wide-web. Great.

"May we come in, Father Muldoon?" The first man said icily, and in that moment, as Mike recognized the voice, the bottom dropped out of his world as his heart slid heavily into his gut.

"Certainly Bishop Dumore´," he responded in a voice barely above a whisper, managing a weak smile as he stepped back from the doorway to allow the men passage; "come in."

As the second man passed in front of him, removing his hat respectfully, Mike recognized with sad surprise that it was his carrot-topped ally from the archbishop's office, the young secretary Father Murphy.

The two preceded him officiously into the rectory sitting room, Muldoon following docilely behind, turning on an overhead light as he entered. Not trusting his voice, he waited for them to initiate the inevitable.

"I have a message for you from Rome. I've been asked to read it aloud," the bishop stated without social preamble, glancing at the half-empty Scotch bottle on the nearby table, the dirty glasses beside it, with a sneer of disapprobation. "I believe it is self-explanatory."

He remained standing, flanked by the boyish deacon, whose chubby face attempted to look stern while the blue-grey eyes confessed his inner confusion and unhappiness at being part of this. Bishop Dumore´, on the other hand, was thoroughly enjoying the execution of his duty. His lips and tongue lolled especially lovingly over the words "heresy," "sacrilege," and "excommunication," as he read the FAX held in his soft well-manicured hands.

"Do you have any last words to say on your own behalf?" he inquired once the message had been delivered, his expression scornful as if daring the priest to even try to defend himself.

Mike felt weird: There was a huge pressure of tears right behind his eyeballs, threatening to burst through in a great deluge of grief at any moment. Yet at the same time he felt an almost equally compelling urge to laugh, a laughter that he instinctively knew once it started would go rapidly out of control. Questions whirled dizzyingly through his head: How could the Pope have found out about his misstep so soon, and why had he made such an extreme and rapid adjudication of Mike's guilt without so much as a hearing to bring out all the facts? The question he did manage to phrase out of all this confusion was almost irrelevant, it seemed: "Who's Pope Sixtus the Sixth?" he asked inanely.

"Actually that's none of your business, now that you are no longer a member of this church. However if you really want to know, you can check tomorrow's news broadcasts."

"May I keep this?" Mike asked, holding out his hand for the FAX. "As a souvenir," he added with a quirky half-smile.

Dumore´ tossed it at him with disdain. "It's a copy anyway," he said, turning on his heel. I'll be back at midnight to ensure you are gone." The door slammed behind the pair, Father Murphy unconsciously mimicking the haughty step of the older man as they went down the walk and out the gate.

Mike leaned his head against the door frame, watching them go, then walked wearily back into the sitting room, falling into one of the chairs and rereading the ultimatum. His throat felt thick and painful; his eyes hurt and his nose was starting to run as if the blocked tears were seeking an alternate outlet.

Marija stood quietly in the darkened hallway, as she'd stood for the past ten minutes, afraid to move, almost afraid to breathe lest the discovery of her presence in the rectory by the two visiting church officials make matters even worse for poor Mike.

Now she was torn between wanting to respect the man's private grief and wanting to run to his side, to comfort him, do something to help. Indecision won out: she stole back into the bedroom to awaken Joe and ask his advice.

When they came back into the room they found Mike Muldoon weeping openly into his arms like a small boy. Wisely they let him cry it out: Later they helped him pack.

While Joe and Marija finished cramming the last of the monsignor's personal belongings into every conceivable nook and cranny of Joe's small foreign car and the priest's old VW van, Mike excused himself and went off into the large empty church for a last private word with his God.

A dim illumination from the lamps at the corners of the altar shone upward onto the life-size wooden figure of Christ, who gazed benignly from his perpetual agony on the cross at the temporary agony of the priest standing below him. As he knelt, Mike felt a warmth flow over him, a tide of compassion, understanding and strength. He found no accusing finger of God in here; instead he felt unconditional and unwavering love. He looked up, tears flooding his eyes, and in his blurred vision he thought he saw the carven replica of Jesus smile down at him.

After a time he rose to leave, but then - without conscious forethought - he reached beneath the altar cloth into the hidden receptacle below and withdrew a small silver pyx of consecrated host and a glass vial of holy water that had been stored there for the morning mass. Looking around with a furtive glance, he tucked these items into his jacket pocket, then started across the chancel. On his second step his foot kicked against something heavy: It was the tall, ornate silver censer. He bent to reach inside, grabbed a cake of incense and stuffed it into his other pocket. Quickly now he left the nave by a side entrance automatically genuflecting and making the sign of the cross on his way out.

Bishop Dumore´ and Deacon Murphy were just arriving as he emerged and locked the chapel door behind him.

"Here are the keys," he said, dangling them at arms' length. "Everything's out that is mine."

"I hope you appreciate all the trouble you've caused us with your escapades," the Bishop charged peevishly. "I shall have to conduct your services here personally, on top of all my other work, until we find a replacement." He raised his brows, as if expecting an apology.

Mike looked at him a long silent moment, then turned and walked to his car without a word.

Chapter 16

Friday, June 16th

San Francisco

The musty, poorly illuminated little bookshop was filled with row upon row of floor-to-ceiling shelves upon which an eclectic variety of tomes, from ancient to modern, lay in comfortable disarray, illuminated by shafts of dust-laden sunbeams which streamed through the high clerestory windows of the old commercial building. The bookstore took up the entire second floor, sandwiched between a mom and pop grocery on street level and a dance studio above, from which the reverberations of heavy feet thumping clumsily in time to a tinny piano's metronomic beat shook a continuous rain of plaster dust down upon the books, the floor, the aging proprietor and his latest customer.

"Wednesday, that's the worst," claimed the balding clerk, aiming a sour grimace up through the ceiling at his hidden adversaries. "We close at noon now on Wednesday: That's the day they have beginner tap and acrobatics classes."

The nervous little pot-belied man bestowed a pained smile on Mike, scratching at his phantom hair. His bulging eyes and wire-rimmed glasses made him look like a caricature of every concierge from every haunted hotel movie ever made, and Mike had to smile back despite his own unease.

He still had no idea what he was doing here, really. He'd spent the previous night on the sofa at Joe's apartment, trying unsuccessfully to get some sleep. By dawn he'd given up, put on a sweater and old pair of jeans, and slipped out of the flat while Joe and MJ still slept, deciding to take a long walk to clear his mind and sort things out. It was nearly 9AM when he spotted the small carefully lettered sign, "New Age Theological Bookstore: a Compleat Collection of Ancient and Modern Literature on the Occult, Theosophy and Religious Lore." It was posted on a weather-beaten door which opened upon a wooden stairway to the upper floors. He stared at it, a strange chill playing on his spine, and found he couldn't resist going up those stairs any more than he'd been able to resist the impulse to pocket the vial of holy water and cake of incense the night before.

Why, he couldn't say: Surely Marija had vanquished her demons at the séance, when she'd commanded Iblis to be gone, to be bound in hell. Yes, he had struck back at her in one last show of defiance and power, but she'd been able to deflect his attack, hadn't she? So why would Mike need occult books, let alone incense and holy water?

"Are you looking for anything in particular?" the clerk asked.

"What do you have on the rites of exorcism?" Mike replied.

A half hour later he emerged from the dark wooden stairwell, squinting into the glare of daylight, a brown paper bag under his arm. Inside the parcel were two books. The first, a red leather edition entitled _White Magic, Rites and Rituals,_ was an anthology of methods used by various cults to purportedly overcome the influence of evil spirits and spells; these ranged from those of modern day Macumba and Wicca to the ancient exorcism rites of Babylonia. Probably mostly hokum, he told himself; none the less he'd shelled out fifty dollars to have it.

The second was a thin, worn, black-jacketed manual of _Rituale Romanum_ , the official Roman Catholic rites of exorcism. The bespectacled proprietor had seemed as surprised to discover it, lodged at the back of one of his display racks, as Mike was pleased.

"I've had this store over 30 years," he said, rubbing his temples as if to jog some memory there; "but I can't remember ever seeing this book before."

Taking advantage of the man's momentary confusion, Mike had purchased it for a mere ten dollars. Now he could hardly wait to poke his head inside the fragile covers of this forbidden manuscript.

He was anxious to find a place where he could read these manuals in private, but knew that Joe's apartment was not a good choice, as it would raise too many questions he wasn't prepared to answer. MJ might even assume that he was concerned she was still vulnerable to demonic possession, and that fear could set her back from the sense of empowerment she'd gained through the séance. Besides, he wasn't really worried about that, that wasn't why he'd got the books; it was just a compulsion to finally possess the knowledge which had been withheld from him for so long, and at such cost.

The public library, he decided; that would be the place: quiet, private, secluded. He all but sprinted the eight blocks to the huge granite building, so excited was he to begin.

He took the broad stone steps two at a time, then slowed his pace as he entered the cool quiet interior of the vast hall. He found the nearest reading room and, picking an unoccupied table, withdrew the red volume first, saving the Catholic manual as if it were dessert.

As he picked up the book its pages fell open to the glossary. "Demon," he read silently; "from Daemon, Greek, originally _'genius spirit'_ , thought to be a spirit that interacted between the gods and men."

He paused a moment, considering that. The next paragraph took him aback even more: "In the early tenets of monotheistic Judaism, demons were considered to be agents of God, manipulated by Him to test or punish His people."

_Would it make a difference how you'd conduct an exorcism,_ he pondered, pulling at his beard: _if you knew the evil spirit possessing someone was controlled by God rather than Satan? Or should you even interfere?_

Quickly he scanned the glossary, looking for a reference on Satan. To his surprise, he discovered that the concept of a supreme evil entity, locked in a power struggle with God over control of the earth, had originated in the doctrine of Christianity alone. No other religion, - not even Judaism, out of whose loins Christianity had sprung - ever had such a concept. All had their lesser demons, of course, their evil spirits and tempters, but none claimed the existence of a primary, antithetical adversary of God such as Satan.

_What if Satan was a relatively recent invention of God, a tool, a great "genius spirit" designed to carry out His ultimate tests of man's faith and moral strength before the final reckoning?_ Mike wondered.

It made sense in a way. If God as the Creator of the Universe is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and the omniform essence of all; then He knows, has power over and **is** all that he has created, including Satan.

If you believe the first, you have to believe the corollary.

Resolutely Mike turned his attention back to the red volume, scanning through the sections that dealt with possession by evil spirits and exorcism. It occurred to him, as he was reading, that although the side trappings and artifacts varied from cult to cult, the basic ritual for exorcism followed the same essential principles throughout: discover the name of the demon in order to address him directly during the exorcism and discover the name of the particular deity the demon in question most fears, so that his name may be invoked to bind and banish that evil spirit. In both cases, it appeared, names have some kind of important power.

Mike skimmed over the glossary list of deities that might be invoked during the rites, then over the names and identities of the many greater and lesser demons that have been known to terrorize man over the ages. Suddenly his eyes stopped on a word, widening as his breath caught in his throat. His heart began to thud, a sickening beat of dread in his chest.

"Lilith!" He whispered aloud, tracing along the lines with his finger; "considered the most malevolent demon of ancient Judaism. In Jewish folklore she was Adam's first wife, spurned and cast off by him in favor of Eve. In a jealous rage she vowed to destroy all the children of Man."

His mind whirled, and he shuddered involuntarily. _Lilith._ That was the name Marija had used to exorcise the evil from the séance! He remembered the odd quality of MJ's voice at the time, as if it were not really she but someone else who was speaking through her.

Lilith! Had Lilith herself dispelled the evil monster from their midst? And if that were true, could she actually be as terrible and evil as legend had it?

If only he could remember the name MJ had called out in addressing the devil. "Isis?" " Iris?" Something starting with an "I"...he flipped back to the section of the glossary starting with _I,_ and began running his eyes down the page, searching. Suddenly he had it!

"Iblis," he read; "the primary devil of the Moslem religion, by legend an angel who rebelled against God when Adam was created, refusing to bow down to a man of flesh, who he felt to be basically inferior to him. He set out to prove his superiority over man by becoming the tempter and destroyer of mankind."

It fit, yet didn't fit. Mike felt himself growing more confused, as if there were a lie in there which, once removed, would allow all the pieces to fall into place.

_Lilith,_ he jotted on his scratch pad; _Adam's first wife. Eve, usurper of Lilith's position; tempted Adam to commit original sin, with resulting banishment from paradise. Iblis, fallen angel; jealous of Adam, avowed tempter and destroyer of man....through Lilith_ _?_ He underlined the question mark twice; _or through Eve!!_ His pencil exclaimed in bold strokes.

He got up to check with the librarian where he could find a King James Bible, wanting to re-read Genesis in hopes of finding a clue. On the way back to his seat, his attention was caught by the rack of morning newspapers draped neatly over their wooden rods. The headlines on each were nearly identical: "Medical Miracle Rocks Vatican. San Francisco's Archbishop new Acting Pope."

Mike grabbed the nearest paper from the rack, carelessly dislodging the support rod, which fell to the floor with a loud clatter. The dyspeptic-looking librarian eyed him with disapproval. Oblivious to her stare, the priest stood there immobilized, reading the article. His sense of shock and dismay grew with every line.

There was, beneath the sensationalism, something naggingly familiar about the story, something that teased at his memory. It had to do with the Pope's particular infirmity and his strange, spontaneous and seemingly miraculous recovery from a state of virtual brain death. This was followed by his subsequent promotion of Archbishop Quillans - of all people! - to exercise the powers of the Papacy in his stead, including the enforcement of any and all mandates the stricken Pontiff might by some later miracle manage to decree. Where was it he had heard this tale before, and why did it give him such a feeling of impending doom?

Suddenly Muldoon had an inkling of what it might be, and he felt his skin grow icy, his scalp crawl at the first hint of an idea so heinous. He dropped the newspaper on the floor and began to flip through the Bible.

The thin, bird-faced librarian was on him like a harpie.

"Sir!" she exclaimed in a shrill, outraged stage whisper; "you must be more careful of library material or I shall have to ask you to leave!"

Mike looked up from the book, his eyes far away, while she made an exaggerated struggle to put the paper back in order and re-insert it in the rack. "Sorry," he mumbled.

He sat back down at the table where he'd left his other reference works and continued flipping through the New Testament pages until he got to the Book of Revelations, chapter thirteen.

_I stood upon the sand of the sea and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns,_ he read silently; _and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy._

"And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded unto death, and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast."

He hadn't known he'd begun reading aloud until the librarian hissed at him, a finger against her thin lips. He glanced up, and continued to read aloud, looking right through her. "And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon."

The hissing sound erupted again, the librarian shaking her head violently. Several people looked up from nearby tables, some annoyed, a few amused. Mike looked her directly in the eye and continued to quote aloud. "And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, **whose deadly wound was healed.** "

"Sir, please!" the outraged woman shrieked, hurling herself around the desk in breathless agitation, and sliding to a stop before him. "I'm afraid I have to ask you to leave. _Now_!"

Mike shook his head as if awakening from a trance. His eyes slowly cleared, and he looked up at the fury in bewilderment. "I'm sorry, what was that?" He asked. "What did you say?"

"You h-heard me," she sputtered in self-righteous anger. "This is a library; we have _rules_! Now will you go quietly, or do I have to call a guard and have you _thrown_ out!?"

Acutely embarrassed and only vaguely aware of what he'd done to offend the woman, the priest hastily gathered the books into his arms and began walking towards the door.

"Not so fast! Are those my books?" she accused, playing to her audience. She pointed a bony finger at the three volumes Mike clutched tightly to his chest.

"This one **is** yours," Mike apologized, handing her the Bible. "The others I brought with me."

Not satisfied, she painstakingly checked all three book jackets with irritating thoroughness before she would finally let him go. "And don't come back," she ordered smartly to the door once it had closed behind him.

He walked the long steep trek back to Joe's apartment on Telegraph Hill, his mind embroiled in half-formed realizations, his heart pounding from an excitement that bordered on terror. It was the thought of his own old leather-bound Bible, still packed away somewhere with the rest of his personal belongings, that pulled his tired legs relentlessly up the hill against the pain. He couldn't waste a minute getting back to this research.

He also found himself wanting badly to talk to Joe and Marija about all this, but when he got back to the little flat it was empty. He felt strangely let down, as if he'd been abandoned, as he wandered bleakly through the empty rooms. Finally he noticed that the note he'd left that morning for them, held by a magnet to the refrigerator door, had been replaced by a new message in Marija's neat backhand.

"Dear Mike," she'd written; "We've gone over to my mother's in Walnut Creek. She called, hysterical over newspaper accounts of the séance and our arrest, so we may need to spend the weekend to convince her we're not murderers or devil's spawn, ha-ha. Come over if you can: We could use your help to calm her down. Call for directions if you decide to - 555-4015 is the house number (our cells don't work out there.) Love, Marija and Joe."

"PS" she'd added; "there's plenty of food in the fridge, so please help yourself: we want you to feel this is your home for as long as you need and want to stay."

As Mike put on a pot of water for tea, he considered calling Marija, talking to her and Joe about his speculations; yet with one hand on the phone, he hesitated. The paper he'd picked up from a newsstand on the way home lay before him on the table, its headlines taunting him. Better do a little more research first before laying this on them, he decided.

Among the cardboard boxes of hastily packed books and personal papers he soon found his thumb worn Bible. Returning to the kitchen, he poured himself a cup of tea and sat down at the table, quickly locating the verses he'd been reading when the librarian had interrupted him. As he reached the middle of the next short chapter he paused, his finger jabbing at one line emphatically. _Babylon is fallen._ That struck a familiar chord, something he'd read about Babylon - "The great whore that sitteth on many waters." But where? He skimmed the next few chapters until he found the reference he was seeking.

_And I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns,_ he read aloud, his voice a rough whisper, skipping over some of the lines. _And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT.... and here is the mind which hath wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth..._ he scanned silently for a minute, then once again spoke aloud, his finger following the lies of the text as he read: _and the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet, but receive power as kings one hour with the beast._

These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength to the beast.

Ten! Wasn't that the number who had participated in the secret consistory? He picked up the newspaper. Yes! The seven Cardinal Bishops of Rome, the Eastern Patriarch, Quillans and the Pope himself: These ten now formed the top echelon of power and authority in the Catholic World! And a huge range of power, wealth and authority it was, secular as well as religious.

Mike mumbled his way through another verse or two of the recondite predictions before reading aloud again, almost dropping the Bible in his excitement: _The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples and multitudes, and nations and tongues...and the woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth._

My God," he shuddered, sinking heavily back down in his chair, a sick excitement washing over him from forehead to bowels. "It all _fits_ , it **all** fits! The city on seven mountains, that's got to be the seven hills of Rome, and the Whore of Babylon," he shook his head slowly; "is the Vatican itself!"

Swiftly he flipped back through the flimsy pages to a vaguely remembered passage in Ephesians: _Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil,_ Saint Paul had written; _for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of the world, against spiritual wickedness in high places._

His fierce joy at the sudden realization of what this all meant was tempered by a clammy dread. What did all this mean to him personally? What was his responsibility, having been given such knowledge, and how could he ever hope to convince anyone with the authority to stop this blasphemy that he was telling the truth??

For he knew now, with a deep knowingness that went beyond all power of thought or reason, that the ailing Pope Marcus who'd momentarily recovered from the stroke - his "deadly wound" - and his chosen auxiliary, Pope Sixtus the Sixth, were the two evil beasts prophesied in the Book of Revelations. Sixtus - was the one about whom it was written "And the dragon gave him his power and his seat and great authority."

Muldoon had never fully accepted the prophecies of _Revelations_ before this. Not that he doubted the concept of a day of judgment, but like most in the priesthood he'd felt it to be metaphorical, something manifest in the spiritual realm not the physical. The predictions had seemed so abstruse, buried as they were in symbolism and subject to such a vast canvas of interpretations, that they never appeared to have much value as a guide to understanding God's final plan for mankind.

And the overall message of _Revelations_ had become so tarnished over the ages, made into carny fair by an endless succession of street corner doomsayers and gun totting doomsday preppers, who saw signs of the end times in every natural and unnatural calamity, that by now most conventional religions scorned such views altogether, lifting their clerical robes above the soiled verses and tiptoeing away from the subject of apocalyptic signs in embarrassment.

_Yet here it is, coming to fruition in crystal clarity, exactly as St. John envisioned, and no one else in the entire world has recognized it for what it is_ , Mike shook his head.

The last vestiges of twilight gave way to the violet velvet of night. The first stars began to twinkle from across the great black void of space, their light penetrating the thin glass window and wasting their final energies on the receptors of the unfocused eyes of Mike Muldoon. Still he sat, bearded chin on clenched fists, looking only inward. His mind raced with possibilities, complexities, doubts and truths, - and a cold, gnawing fear - as he contemplated what must be done; and why he must be the one to do it.

I _must_ have been chosen for this task by God," he said aloud; "else why should the Truth have been revealed to me like this? Yet," he sighed, getting up at last to turn on the kitchen light; "there's still some detail I'm missing, some insight I lack. I don't know how to proceed, don't feel _ready_ to proceed. And I don't know why."

His eyes fell on the note, still tacked to the refrigerator door.

"Marija," he whispered. It has to have something to do with her: That's what got me involved in this in the first place. She was the first message God sent!"

He grabbed the Bible, his hands shaking so badly he had difficulty turning to Chapter Twelve, the chapter the book had fallen open to that night of her first visit to the rectory. It was the chapter that just preceded all the other prophesies in Revelations he'd just deciphered.

_And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun..._ he scanned quickly... _and the dragon stood before the woman...And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels!_

He closed the holy book with a bang, then with trembling fingers dialed the number MJ'd left. The repetitive buzz of the busy signal answered.

"Damn!" he exploded in frustration: "Why didn't she leave the address?"

Running back to the closet where his gear was stored he gathered up his Catholic fetishes he taken from the church - a vial of holy water, the small silver box of consecrated host, the cake of incense - and his own large wooden crucifix with the ivory Jesus, secured at hands and feet by tiny golden nails. These he stuffed into the oversized pockets of his navy pea jacket, along with the manual of _Rituale Romanum_ and the book on white magic.

Rifling through his canvas duffle he found and donned a badly wrinkled clerical shirt, then slipped the heavy wool jacket on over it. He tried Marija's mother's phone number again, but it was still busy so he tucked her note into his pocket and left for Walnut Creek, figuring he could call again from his cell once there.

A rising surge of anxiety quickened his pulse: He had a premonition that whatever climax all these events had been leading up to, it was going to happen very very soon. He could only hope he'd get there in time.

Fighting his way through the heavy Friday night traffic on the clogged Oakland Bay Bridge, he finally reached the relative peace of Highway 24 on the quiet country stretch leading to Walnut Creek shortly after 10 PM.

Mike's car wound through the hilly landscape dotted here and there with small weak lights, cabins or mansions peeking out from behind the dense foliage.

The big, plain, pie-faced clock on the wall of the brightly lit ARCO station in Lafayette read 10:35 when in pulled in for gas and directions. From there it was only about three more miles northeast on 680 to Walnut Creek. When he was done filling the tank he used his cell to call the number MJ'd left on the note. This time it was answered on the fifth ring, the voice on the other end sounding tired, female and decidedly grumpy.

"Marija?" Muldoon faltered.

"No, this is her mother. Marija doesn't live here anymore. Is this another damn reporter?"

"No, no this is Michael Muldoon, ma'am, the priest? We met at the hospital last week?"

"Oh, yes, Father Muldoon," the woman's voice softened to a growly purr. "How are you?"

"I'm fine, thank you Mrs...uh, Mrs Draekins, is it?"

"Yes, but do call me Dolores, won't you Father?"

"Certainly, and I thank you for that. But, and please pardon my abruptness Dolores, but may I speak to Marija now? It's, uh, very important I get hold of her right away."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, but she really isn't here, Father," Dolores minced.

"Is Joe there then?" He clenched the cell phone against his ear, resisting the urge to pound the steering wheel with his fist as he strove to keep his voice calm and polite. "She left me a note saying they'd gone to visit you, and I really must talk to one of them."

_"Neither_ is here anymore, Reverend Muldoon," the woman sighed with a touch of petulance. "They went for a little drive about an hour ago, needed some 'fresh air' she said. Frankly it was a bit of a scene here today, I can tell you that. I don't know what's the matter with Marija anymore. I mean, she _is_ my daughter, and of course I love her no matter what, but frankly she's never been what you'd call completely _normal_ , you know? These crazy ideas she has - even when she was a child she was strange - and now this horrid scandal, reporters calling _me_ all hours...Frankly Father Muldoon, I think she's gone _clear_ off the deep end this time, I really do. Just like her father. Now _there_ was a dreamer: no sense of reality whatsoever. Like the time he..."

"Please!" Mike shouted through the barrage of words; "Please, Dolores! I'd be glad to discuss this with you any other time, but right now it is absolutely imperative that I find her and Joe as soon as I can. So, did they mention where they might be going?"

******

Marija had known it was not going to be any picnic, dealing with her mother, but she hadn't realized just how difficult it would be. On the drive over she'd decided that the best tack would be one of unblushing honesty. She'd simply sit her mother down and explain as clearly and objectively as she could exactly what had been happening to her over the past three weeks, culminating in the disastrous séance.

Two days ago the mere thought of confiding such experiences to her mother would have panicked her; but now she felt only this inner calmness - the lingering cathartic effect of what happened at the séance, she supposed - as she mentally rehearsed what she would say.

Unfortunately she'd vastly underestimated the rigidity of her mother's stance on anything to do with the occult. As soon as Marija broached the subject her mother, with set lips and narrowed eyes, had slammed the door of her mind tightly shut.

_Her mind had snapped shut, but unfortunately her mouth had not,_ MJ thought now.

She was a narrow-minded woman, but she was also glibly clever, and had apparently done her homework for this meeting. Her first line of defense was to discredit everything Marija said by quoting excerpts she'd dug out of _Psychology Today_ for the occasion. She'd launched psychiatric buzz words like hand grenades: "Drug Flashback," "executive burnout," and MJ's personal favorite "episodic paranoid schizophrenic delusions."

"I think she made that one up," Marija muttered aloud.

"What's that?" Joe said, glancing over at her as he drove.

"Nuthin," she replied, staring out into the black, moonless night.

After the older woman had run out of prepared quotes to confuse and undermine her daughter's story, she'd resorted to self-righteous denouncements on the subject of spiritualism in general as the work of Satan, and on Marija's interest and participation in such goings on as akin to devil worship.

When MJ had started to laugh, her mother flushed red with anger and moved rapidly to her final coup.

"Well, _you_ may think this is all very funny," she'd cried in contemptuous outrage; "but I hope you realize that you've completely ruined not just your life but Joe's as well. Not to mention that nice young priest! Have you even considered what you're going to do for money, provided you don't end up in prison, now that you've not only lost your own job but probably cost poor Joe his job too?"

She'd bestowed a look of sympathy on the man in question, expecting his nod of tacit agreement, but the cold anger in his eyes rebuffed her as he reached out to take his wife's hand. Marija, who'd given up trying to contradict her mother during this final tirade, was blinking back tears of frustration and hurt as she stood up in defeat.

"I need some fresh air," she'd announced to the room. "The bullshit in here stinks too much to breathe."

The pair had left without another word, slamming the door behind them. Twenty minutes later, sitting in the parking lot of a nearby McDonalds, watching the steam rise from their coffees, each had waited for the other to speak.

"So, what now?" Joe'd finally asked, breaking the long silence.

"I don't know: I'm not ready to give up yet...after all, she _is_ my mother." MJ'd paused, swallowing back the pain that had risen in her throat. "I'm just so damn tired of arguing, of defending myself. Sometimes I even start believing her opinion of me, thinking maybe she's right, maybe I really am a nut case. I mean, if I'm crazy, would I know it?"

When Joe started to protest, she'd raised a hand to still him. "Let's just go for a drive somewhere out in the country, okay? I need to get my head together before we go back."

The roads carried them along for a while, an unplanned route of sudden turns which led out of the suburban affluence of Walnut Creek and onto a lightly traveled two lane track heading south. It was a poorly lit rural road which, after a few miles, dipped into a long expanse of pleasantly rolling farmlands before beginning to wind gradually upward through hilly twists overhung by the shadowy forms of live oak, spruce, and Monterey pine. Ten minutes into the mountainous wilds a large sign by the side of the road loomed up unexpectedly in the glare of their headlights, followed by a white metal gate, chained and locked, which blocked the passage ahead.

_Mount Diablo State Park,_ the sign read: _North Gate, Day Use Only. Overnight Visitors Please Use South Gate Entrance._

There was a small parking area to the left of the turnaround that fronted the barrier, and a rustic unlit park restroom on that side about a hundred feet from the road.

"Let's stop here for a bit, okay Joe?" MJ said, breaking the silence that had enshrouded them ever since they'd left her mother's. Her voice sounded strangely distant, lost in thought. He shot a look at her, but then she added lightly: "I need to use the john...too much coffee."

After he'd escorted her safely to the women's side of the restroom, Joe went over to the other side to take care of his own needs. When he emerged she still wasn't out, so he lit a cigarette and watched the stars for a while. It wasn't until he'd finished his smoke that he realized she'd been in there an inordinately long time. He walked over by the women's entrance, the first vague edge of unease beginning to gnaw at him.

"Marija? You about done in there?"

Silence. His uneasiness escalated into alarm.

"Marija, are you in there? Answer me, please!"

When there was still no reply he hesitated only a second, then pushed open the door and walked inside. A quick search by the flicker of his disposable lighter revealed no sign of his wife. The emptiness mocked him.

"Marija!" he yelled frantically, running back outside. "Where the hell are you?!"

The moment she'd heard the rusty springs on the wooden door of the men's room squeak closed behind Joe, Marija had quietly exited the building, a distracted look on her face. Without seeming to hurry, she'd walked quickly into the blackness of the surrounding woods and disappeared.

She was not fleeing anything, rather her feet moved forward purposefully, as if under the direction of some other mind, toward a particular destination of which she knew nothing.

Joe's voice was calling her name as she topped the narrow ridge a hundred yards above the parking lot, but Marija couldn't hear him now. She couldn't hear the wind whispering warnings through the pines, or the concerned question of an owl: Her head was filled with other voices, a low buzzing hymn, a fused Gregorian chant, white noise that filled her mind, blocking out all external sounds and dizzying her senses into a high vertigo.

As she started down the steep incline on the other side of the hill, her foot slipped on a loose stone, pitching her head first into the inky gloom below. Her cry was swallowed back into her throat as she tumbled down into the unknown depths.

There was a momentary blinding flash of pain, followed by a slowly closing blackness. As she lapsed into unconsciousness, she felt herself separate from her body, watching it grow smaller and smaller beneath her as she floated lazily upward, no longer knowing or caring about the pain.

Suddenly her speed accelerated, doubling and redoubling and redoubling again. She was hurtling beyond space and time now, falling into the total eclipse of dimensionless existence. A wave of bodiless, deranged laughter reached out to grasp and tear at the fabric of her soul as she flew by, but she was moving too fast, too far, for it to engulf her in its realm.

After an eternity - or a moment - she abruptly entered an arena of blinding white light where all sensation of time and space both ended and began.

"Hello, my dear," said a familiar voice, slick and oily and full of perfumed hate. "I knew you'd come to me eventually. How could you not? You've always been mine...Lilith."

Joe held onto the hope that MJ had returned to his car while he was still inside the building. That _must_ be it; she was probably sitting there right now with the windows up against the chill, playing the stereo. That's why she didn't hear him, didn't answer his call. She was probably wondering where _he_ was. He raced toward the parking area, trying valiantly to combat the burning pit of fear in his belly.

But the car was empty, as somehow he knew it would be; the radio silent. He shook his head back and forth like a panicked animal, then reached in through the open window and began honking the horn over and over while his fear bloomed into anger. Where the hell had she gone?

"She'd better have a damn good reason for doing this to me," he raged aloud; but inside he hoped, God how he hoped, she didn't.

Mike had managed to extract from Marija's mother a random list of places her daughter might possibly have run to. Automatically eliminating any of those across the bay as too far to go and unlikely in any case, he discovered that even the pared down list encompassed over six hundred square miles of rural countryside, from Lafayette in the west to Clayton in the east, and all the way south to San Ramon. Within that area must be thousands of miles of back roads as well as major highways crisscrossing the landscape.

Nearly overwhelmed by the task before him, the priest went back to the service station he'd stopped at earlier to purchase a local road map. Returning to his old VW van, he turned on the dim interior light, carefully unfolding the map and with it the realization of just how tiny he and the two people he had to find were against the scale of the area he had to search.

He contemplated the maze of colored lines, names and markings, trying to envision the land it represented, imagining himself looking down on it from high above as if from the air. Mike located his own approximate location, a small insignificant dot on the roadside between Lafayette and the intersection of Highways 24 and 680.

Suddenly, as he continued to stare at the map, wondering where to begin his search, a strange transformation began to take place. The colored red and blue lines of the map disappeared, becoming instead gray concrete ribbons with mass and dimension. The printed names and numbers on the paper vanished next, changing into sparkling dots of light moving along the asphalt ribbons that ran between an undulating sea of brown earth and green vegetation.

He was above the land now, actually above it, and with a peculiar twist of vision he could see himself in the scene below, a miniscule man bent over a map, parked beneath the blue and white ARCO sign in an ancient beat up Volkswagen, an island of light in the dark ocean of the countryside.

After a moment his attention was drawn to something in the distance: As he focused in he recognized Joe, standing alone outside his red Alfa Romeo, angrily leaning on the horn while his head turned rapidly back and forth, scanning his surroundings. The look on his face told the rest of the story, a growing fear beneath the anger and frustration. He was in some sort of hilly, wild-looking area to the southeast of where Mike's own tiny form stood staring at the map. Between the two men tiny glowworms of light sped along a dark macadam artery – obviously a major highway leading south. But Joe was some distance east of that highway in a remote stretch of land that looked empty and forbidding.

Mike wondered at the strange tricks of perception he was experiencing, the way he was able to see Joe with absolute clarity – first from a great distance, then close enough to see the lines of worry etched in his face. Space had lost its usual parameters, dropped its physical barriers, changed its rules: It was as though his ability to perceive a particular perspective was directly related to his desire to see it.

Next instant, wanting to, he discovered the missing woman. She was lying beside a great jagged granite boulder, its pale surface glowing dully in the weak moonlight. She was just over a thickly wooded hillock from the clearing where Joe stood calling out to her, her body crumpled in a broken looking heap on the ground, unmoving. She was so still – dear God, she was lying so still! He knew he had little time left, he had to find that wild area where the couple had gone, and lead Joe to Marija before it was too late.

Suddenly he was back inside his car, just a bone weary black man staring blankly at a map in an ARCO station. But his index finger was now pointing at a green shaded zone on the chart: "Mount Diablo State Park," he breathed.

Turning on his headlights, he gunned the engine and lurched out of the bright neon oasis onto the dark gray expanse of highway, heading south as fast as the old vehicle would go.

"No, that's not true," Marija was crying, pleading to the entity whose voice had confronted her in this dimensionless void. "I can't be yours! You're evil, _the_ Evil. I'm not! I've always tried to do what was right."

Her desperate denials dissolved into a gasp of shuddering silence as the beast began to physically materialize out of the dark.

First came the eyes, red almond shaped orbs glowing like those of a wild thing caught in a wayward traveler's headlights; then materialized a feral growl of gleaming teeth within a wicked lipless slash of a mouth. Next to appear was the face, a mask of dark green skin tattooed in scenes of horror and hatred – wars, murder, genocidal brutality and sexual depravity – graphic evidence of the degree to which man continuously blasphemed and degraded God's most treasured creation, his own Self.

The odor of the beast was like the stench from a million rotting corpses, a ton of reeking feces, all those things which profaned and mocked the sacred gift of life with the crude reminders of its ultimate inevitable end product: death, stink and decay

"Lilith," the empty hollow of the demon's voice reasoned smoothly; "you're being silly. What is _good_ and what is _evil_ anyway? Two meaningless words levied on acts committed to enhance one's survival in a timeless void where in truth one can do nothing but survive. Look at it this way: We all continue to exist for infinity regardless, so what's the difference how we go about it? How can any one act be judged good or evil when the only true sin is to refuse to play, to do nothing at all in this game?"

"But there are basic moral laws, precepts of right and wrong, rules," the woman protested weakly.

The devil snarled in disgust. "Have you forgotten how you pledged yourself to my cause when God betrayed you by creating Eve? Perhaps you need to have your memory refreshed, my dear. Look!" the voice hissed; "Look and remember Who broke the rules first!"

In the center of the space where Marija/Lilith cowered, a figure began to present itself. It was a man, young, with thick curly black hair, long muscular limbs, glowing coffee-colored skin. She gasped at his beauty, his unadorned elegance, his sweet innocence...and at the first stirrings of an ancient memory that felt like every sad love song ever written.

"Oh yes, he _is_ gorgeous," the wide lipless mouth snickered; "a beauty to take your breath away, has he not? But beware the venom hidden in the spines of the exquisite lion fish, the thorn beneath the blossom of the fragrant rose. Beauty can be a trap, a lure to draw one close, to lower one's defenses for the deadly strike. You of all people, Lilith, should know that!" Mocking laughter filled the blackness around the little area of light.

Within the arena now appeared a second form, so like the first it might have been his clone but for the fact that this one was decidedly female. Equal in height and coloring, long limbed and lithe, the woman stepped forward to take her male counterpart's hand. As their eyes met it was as if the one person were looking into himself, all the parts of his being that he would never have been able to see without this mirror image opposite to reflect upon.

"It is you, Lilith, yes," the dragon chuckled. "God's perfect little creations, weren't you? Pieces of his divine Self that he could play with as a spoiled child dallies with his toys, endlessly creating dramas within His mind for you to enact." His voice had turned softly threatening, a thin razor of sarcasm beginning to expose its black edge.

"Paradise, Lilith...You see there, you soon even had little ones. God began replicating His creation through you, filling His chessboard with tiny insignificant pieces of His spirit and energy."

As he spoke, two more human forms had manifested nearby, a small boy and a smaller girl child. Both were elfish miniatures of the adults, playing quietly at their parents' feet, now and then giggling mischievously behind cupped hands at a shared secret of childhood. Around the four a beautiful garden had appeared.

"Ah, but you know how God is, Lilith, He does get bored so quickly." The dragon's teeth gleamed wickedly out of the blackness.

Suddenly the back corner of the garden filled with a smoke-gray mist that rapidly began to eddy into a vortex. The four figures looked over at it, curious but not alarmed. They had no knowledge of fear, no reason for distrust. Not then.

After a moment the whirling cloud slowed and thickened, and in its midst a figure began to take shape. Gradually as the mists around it cleared it became discernible as another human form, another female. She was somewhat shorter than Adam and Lilith, fuller of breast and thigh. Her skin was lighter, with an exotic olive cast to it, her hair a deep auburn cascade, eyes green and catlike, her lips full and inviting.

No wiles or pretensions were put up to mask her intent. She simply walked over to Adam, put one hand on his chest, one on his groin, and locked her lips to his. And that was that: Adam was enchanted, beguiled, entrapped, "in love." Lilith had ceased to exist for him.

He and his new woman – Eve – faded out of the garden, leaving Lilith and the two children alone and bewildered in the dimming light. And now Lilith knew pain and despair, and the impotent fury of loss.

"Yes," breathed Marija; "I remember."

"You were betrayed, Lilith; betrayed by God Himself for His own entertainment," the dragon spat, whipping his tail around viciously. Sparks of light flashed behind the movement, scarring the dark void of night that girdled the garden area as the three lonely figures slowly faded away. Now he leaned conspiratorially toward her, his foul breath gagging her, stifling her senses like a drug.

"He wanted to experience pain, so He gave _you_ pain. He wanted to know despair, so He gave _you_ despair. He wanted to feel loss and grief and anger, so He _used_ you, manipulated your feelings in order to experience these most foreign of emotions Himself, _through_ you. And he wanted to feel _lust_ , so He gave Adam Eve."

"But it was **I** , Lilith, who gave you the sweet comfort of revenge, **I** who taught you how to hate...and how to get even," the voice purred slickly. "You haven't forgotten _that_ , have you my dear?"

"I haven't forgotten."

"And in return for my gifts, my friendship, you promised to be mine, mine forever. You promised to do my bidding; to aid in my own plans for vengeance against this heartless God of ours, remember?"

"Yours forever," she intoned numbly.

"Come then, Lilith. Come to me now. I have one last little task for you to perform."

Joe had harnessed the frenetic energy of his terror after a couple of minutes, setting it to the more directed course of trying to deduce which was the most likely path Marija might have taken when she fled into the wilderness.

As he wandered about the fringes of the rest area, he discovered a small worn track winding through the soft amber grasses on the other side of the public lavatory. He followed it as it trailed listlessly through the spicy sumac and sage at the edge of the clearing before rising sharply through manzanita and scrub oak to disappear in the denser vegetation up the hill.

He worked his way up the steep incline around columns of maple and pine trees, skirting yard wide boulders and scrabbling on hands and feet over a scree of loose earth and shale.

As he neared the top of the ridge, panting heavily from the exertion, he heard a voice call out his name.

" _Joe."_ It was soft, almost part of the wind. He turned his head, trying to tell from which direction it had come.

" _Joe, help me."_ It was Marija! But he still couldn't tell where the voice originated; it seemed to be all around him.

"Marija!" He yelled to the trees and sky. "Where are you?!"

" _Here! I'm here,"_ the night answered back. " _Please darling, I need you. Come to me now"_

"I'm coming Marija," Joe called, standing atop the ridge. But before he could take another step, he felt the earth's solidness waver beneath his feet, saw the surrounding trees soften, their shapes weaving drunkenly against the moonlight sky like so many columns of smoke. His heart did a strange lurch, a small adrenaline rush upped its tempo.

"Just keep talking," he begged the wind. "Show me how to find you."

The stars moved in, no larger just closer, the firmament taking on the appearance and texture of Madame Le Beuc's ceiling – a low, flat, unidimensional space speckled with counterfeit glow-in-the-dark planets, constellation and galaxies.

" _Please hurry,"_ the woman's voice entreated; " _hurry Joe_."

The man looked upward in confusion: The voice seemed to be coming from directly overhead, but how could that be? The heavy ceiling of sky and stars felt as if it were pressing down on him. Then, as he watched, it began to thin out, becoming semi-transparent, like a one-way window losing its refractive quality. He thought, just for a moment, that he could see a shadowy form beyond its dark glass, a huge black phantom shape moving behind the starry firmament.

Joe shook his head to clear it: just clouds passing over his mind explained reasonably. _(But the shadow went_ _behind_ _the stars.)_ Just a trick of vision, then; tired eyes, he insisted, rubbing them with his fists.

The beast chuckled, a slender black ribbon of tongue flickering out, running across the horny plates which formed his upper lip, anticipating the joy of victory so near at hand. He had waited, plotted, manipulated so long and so carefully for this moment. With this antagonist defeated and the other soon to fall, there would be no witnesses to warn the few who might have listened, no one to pull his servants down from the penultimate seat of power which they were, at this very moment, on the eve of assuming.

A roar of malevolent triumph exploded upward from the dragon's belly at the thought, bulging out his throat and pouring from the ugly slash of mouth with a hot, pungent odor. Marija cringed, turning her face from the fiery blast.

Convinced of her own inherent evil, knowing now she was a lost soul from the beginning of time, she had called Joe into the trap as the demon had ordered. There'd been a perverse sort of comfort in the act, the finality of succumbing to her true nature: Resolving the issue of which side she was on once and for all was a relief, regardless of which side she'd chosen.

But as Joe drew closer and the dragon switched his attention from Marija to the man, focused on the task of overcoming Joe's last vestiges of resistance, his hypnotic grip on Marija's own mind weakened. As it did, MJ found some doubts and uncertainties returning.

How could she have been on Satan's side all this time and not have been aware of it; why would she have kept trying to be good, to do what was right with her life, if she was fundamentally evil? So was it really God who'd created Eve, or had Satan done it, blaming God in order to fool her into becoming an ally in his eternal war with heaven? And even if she had been his ally in the past, must she continue with this betrayal of the man she loved just because _she_ had once been betrayed?

"It _was_ you that sent Eve, wasn't it?" She whispered, looking up at the dragon. "You deceived me, making me believe God had turned against me, in order to get me on your side!"

"Shut up stupid cunt! It's too late now in any case," the demon sneered. "You're mine."

"No!" she muttered aloud in sudden defiance. "I won't do it! This has to stop now. "Joe!" she yelled into the abyss; "get out of here! It's a trap, a **trap**!"

Joe recoiled as if slapped, the force of Marija's warning shoving him back into the physical world. The ground rose up to meet his rump – hard, hurting, reassuringly solid once more. He looked around in bewilderment.

The moon darkened angrily to a bloody hue, then faded away altogether. The very sky seemed to shiver. Massive black clouds boiled up over the far horizon like a distant tidal wave, hurtling toward him in silent fury. A tremor rumbled ominously through the earth beneath.

All at once a brightly glowing object shot across the sky To Joe's amazement it traced a slow curving arc that ended not in a fiery meteoric burn-up but rather an abrupt, calculated stop, to hover in the air some thirty meters away. It was so close he could feel its heat, so bright it cast a long milky shadow across the ridge.

As Joe struggled to his feet, the shadow behind the sky screamed and roared, writhing his monstrous head in frustration and rage. From out of his black domain exploded a great shower of burning meteors which hurtled through the heavens to explode against the invisible wall of the atmosphere in fiery trails, the smoke of their destruction turning into distorted forms, monstrous and inhuman, which filled the sky with agonized wails.

_It appears the legions of Satan have arrived,_ a voice in Joe's mind – his own or that of another – stated calmly. _Make yourself ready for battle._

Mike Muldoon had reached the southern entrance to Mount Diablo State Park at about the same time Joe was nearing the top of the ridge above the north gate a few miles away.

Not wishing to arouse undue suspicion at his late night arrival, the priest leaned casually out the van's window and asked the bored looking ranger, in as offhanded a voice as he could muster, if the man remembered seeing a young couple in a red Alfa Romeo come through about an hour ago. "Maybe they left a message?" he added hopefully "We were supposed to meet earlier, but I got tied up."

"Nope," was the taciturn reply. "That'll be ten dollars for overnight use, if you're gonna stay."

"Sure," Mike replied, extracting a couple of fives from his worn leather wallet and handing them to the ranger. "You couldn't have missed them, the couple that is, could you?"

"Been here all night; ony thing through since sundown was a couple vans of wannabe hippies from UCB, lookin' to _commune with nature_ on ecstacy, I imagine," he grinned.

The priest managed to paste a polite smile over his growing anxiety. "Is there any other entrance to the park my friends might have used?" He enquired lightly.

"North end, but that'un closes at dusk. Day use only, that side of the park." The ranger had come out of his booth and was leaning against Mike's window now, peering into the vehicle in a way that was making the priest decidedly uncomfortable. There was the sweet scent of whiskey on the man's breath.

"Is there any way to get over there from this side, just in case they went there by mistake?" Mike asked, simultaneously letting up on the clutch slightly so that he could begin to ease away from the man.

The ranger stepped back, his voice now cool. "Just follow the main road in; 'bout halfway up the mountain it branches off. Take the left fork.

"Thanks," said Mike, starting to pull forward.

"Only you can't drive all the way to the entrance gate; road into that section's chained off at night. You'll have to hoof it the last quarter mile or so. You'll see where, just follow the road."

"Okay, sure: Thanks again," Muldoon called over his shoulder as he began driving slowly away.

"If you find yer friends, tell 'em to get the hell outta there. Day section's closed."

Mike nodded, thinking that would be the least of his worries if he were lucky enough to find them.

"Deadbeats," the ranger muttered under his breath as he went back to the warmth of his little green booth and bottle of Jacks.

Mike restrained the urge to hurry, keeping his speed to the prescribed 15MPH until he had rounded the first curve of the park road and was safely out of the ranger's sight. Then he pressed the pedal to the floor, pushing for all the power he could get out of the tired old 4 cylinders. The sense of grave urgency that had begun to impress itself on him earlier that evening in San Francisco had not lessened but grown stronger with every mile since. He gunned the engine, but to little effect: The van stubbornly plugged along at a reluctant 30 miles per hour on the uphill grade.

_Running would be faster than this_ , he fumed, banging his palm in frustration against the steering wheel.

It was actually a relief when he came to the chain across the road and was forced to abandon the exhausted vehicle and put his body to the test.

The religious artifacts in his jacket pockets clanked and bobbed as he ran, threatening to spill out, yet bringing a measure of comfort with their presence. As he topped a small rise he saw the north gate station still several hundred feet away at the base of a long gentle slope, and in the parking lot just outside the gate was Joe's red sports car! His heart leapt as he began to sprint toward the familiar vehicle, then slowed as hope failed when he realized Joe was nowhere in sight.

Where had he gone? Had he found Marija yet? Mike stopped, his eyes groping through the darkness, tracking slowly up from the car as he tried to spot the ridge he'd seen in his vision, the ridge beneath which the woman lay unconscious.

Suddenly a bright glowing object shot across the sky in a slow curving arc and stopped, to hover like a streetlamp just above the rim of the hill behind the north gate parking area.

The monsignor broke into a dead run, his mouth working in a breathless prayer that he would get there in time, that it wasn't already too late.

The dragon had screamed and bellowed in a convulsion of fury at Marija's betrayal, his voice filling the void around the spot where she stood with a blinding spectacle of colors. Liquid fire erupted from his mouth and flaring nostrils, looking like a flood of molten blood as it swirled and eddied around the luminescent bubble of her haven, hungrily licking at its boundaries but unable to penetrate, unable to touch her in this place.

"I'll be seeing you bitch," he'd roared; "and when I do, I'll teach you what it means to defy my will!"

With that, he had disappeared in an implosion of blackness, leaving a deafening quiet in his wake.

Mike drove through the brush like an angry bull, scrambling up the steep slope as fast as his muscular legs would take him. Halfway up the hill he began to notice an odd sensation, as if time were slowing down, making his limbs less effectual. As he neared the top of the ridge he felt as if he were moving through heavy molasses, every muscle pulling against the unbearable load of its own mass. A huge invisible hand seemed to flatten against his chest, holding him in place, making him strain for every inch of forward progress.

The very air grew thick and viscous, charged with an electrical energy that stood his body hairs on end as he continued to struggle through the invisible sea of gravity, running on useless limbs that twitched beneath the bedcovers, his body bathed in sweat from the exertion of getting nowhere at all.

He cried out, his voice a guttural drawn out wail: _"Jo-o-oe...He-e-e-el-lp...me-e-e-e!"_

A blinding flash of lightning shredded the air around him, and a nearby pine tree exploded into flame and flying cinders. The acrid scent of ozone swirled in pungent clouds beneath his nose. Reflexively he dove to one side, floating heavily to the ground. As he landed he hit his hip with bruising force against a round gray rock, the glass vial in his pocket shattering, a crystalline sound, each minute concussion of the breaking shards hitting his eardrums with perfect clarity. The spilt holy water filled the pocket of his navy pea jacket and began to seep coldly into his trouser leg.

Struggling to his hands and knees, he began to climb laboriously upward once more. It was impossible to tell how much time was passing; it was measured in his movement, his infinitesimal progress forward – inch by difficult inch – toward the crest of the rise just above.

All at once he felt a pair of hands attach themselves firmly beneath his armpits, felt himself being drawn to his feet. He looked up into the face of Joe Marten.

"Thank God," the priest wheezed, his voice, his time sense, suddenly back to normal. "Have you found her yet? Have you found Marija?"

But before he could answer the rolling tempest Joe had seen approaching across the valley was upon them. All around the two men the heavens were being bent into awesome displays of energy and power. Ball lightning dropped and exploded in mid-air above their heads, while hundreds of jagged bolts zigzagged viciously into the earth in every direction, setting off a myriad of small fires in the tinder-dry forest.

This local display of might was set against an almost continuous backdrop of sheet lightning – brilliant curtains of electricity short-circuiting across the distant sky one after the other. The din was enormous, shaking the ground beneath their feet with the intensity of a major earthquake.

The glowing sphere that had hovered above the ridge, guiding the priest to Joe, was no longer in sight. Its purpose fulfilled, it had abandoned the pair to face the wrath of Satan alone.

A sudden cessation of the enveloping din startled both men back to a studied, nervous alertness. Now a deathlike, menacing stillness filled the air, a hushed anticipatory quiet like that preceding an earthquake or hurricane. They watched the sky, standing back to back, not daring to breathe, to speak, even to think.

The temperature seemed to be dropping rapidly, the sky – all at once totally devoid of light – closed around them like an icy fist.

Then a violet-hued shaft of light began to descend from a rent in the heavens. As it came lower, they could make out a form enclosed in its beam, a vision fabricated out of the stuff of nightmares.

It had a reptilian shape, with heavy muscular hindquarters covered in glistening green scales, and the upper arms and torso of a man. Its broad back was bent under a ridge of ten spikes which proceeded up the spine from the base of its thick tail and ended at the top of the skull in two horns, one above each eye. Its huge head was that of a dragon, its bulging eyes red almond shaped orbs with black vertical slits for pupils.

Mike felt a sickening dread gnarl his stomach at the sight of a monstrous instrument of copulation, swollen with sexual excitement, which protruded stiffly from beneath the belly of the beast. As the creature descended past the men, dropping below the rim of the hill where they stood transfixed in horror, it turned to fasten a pair of mocking crimson-colored eyes on them, laughing.

Joe broke first, followed closely by Mike, running to look over the ledge. They saw Marija's unconscious form lying in the narrow ravine below, a small puddle of blood beneath her tousled hair turning the dusty soil dark and wet.

The beast was already clambering atop her, his scaly claw-like hands lifting her limp hips, tearing away the fabric of her jeans as if it were paper.

"Noooo!" Mike hollered, teetering on the rim of the crumbly shale cliff while his hands shuffled frantically through his pockets. He withdrew the large wooden cross and hurled it down upon the broad horned back sixty feet below.

The monster let forth a piercing shriek, half pain, half rage. Dropping the woman he clawed at the smoking crucifix that had embedded itself in his flesh, finally dislodging it. Where it had lay a blackened brand now smoldered amidst the glistening green scales.

The dragon's big ugly head revolved by slow degrees on the coarse neck, circumrotating a full half circle until it was looking backward up at the men with a hatred so profound it was palpable. The beast seemed to hesitate, as if debating whether or not to come after his antagonists; then a look of malicious glee supplanted the hate in his eyes and he turned back to the insensate woman, raising her bared buttocks with his claws to meet the thrust of his organ.

Joe and Mike hurtled over the crag, leaping and falling as the shale crumbled beneath each plummeting step. It was only sixty feet to the base of the little arroyo, but even as the men were reaching the bottom the luminescent tunnel of light through which the demon had entered their world began to separate from the ceiling of sky, whirling like a tornado as it darkened to an ugly red. Then it and the wildly pumping dragon disappeared in a spinning vortex into the body of the woman.

By the time they reached Marija's side it was too late, the beast had vanished altogether, the light was one, and the remaining darkness was pregnant with their dread.

As Joe reached out a tentative hand to lightly touch her cheek, Marija's eyes flew open – pupil-less crimson eyes that glowed wickedly in the stygian gloom – and her lovely soft lips parted to release a black slender ribbon of tongue to taste the night.

Instinctively he recoiled in horror, leaping away, but as he did so the priest moved forward, dangling a rosary protectively before him as he squatted down by the side of the possessed woman.

"The Cross, Joe ; get the cross!" Mike whispered urgently, holding the little crucifix on its string of polished prayer beads closer to Marija's face while she snarled and cringed away from the holy fetish.

Joe scrambled for the large wooden crucifix, which lay in the dirt nearby still smoldering from its encounter with the demon. He picked it up, tossing it gingerly from one hand to the other. "Hot," he explained.

"Wrap it in a handkerchief then, and hold it above her head. Quickly!" the priest added, seeing the woman's body begin struggling to rise against the weak talisman he held in front of her.

Joe stood above that which had been his bride, swallowing hard. He held out the cross with both hands against the red-eyed demon she'd become wishing he were somewhere else, someone else. Immediately the woman fell back against the ground, writhing and screaming, the foulness of her language exceeded only by the foulness of her breath. Her hands were thrown protectively over her face, her black tongue snaking angrily at the air.

_Keep her there_ , Mike wanted to tell him, but he hesitated now to voice the order aloud, afraid that to speak in the presence of the beast might give him some kind of advantage over them. Yet Joe heard the words as clearly as if the other man had spoken, and nodded, standing firm despite his fear.

Mike slipped the silver pyx of consecrated host from his jacket, carefully removing one of the paper-thin wafers of wheat that symbolized the body of Christ, then replacing the little box in his pocket.

_Distract her,_ he thought, while beginning to edge closer to Marija's thrashing body. Joe immediately responded, leaping across to her right side and jamming the crucifix to within inches of her face.

As she howled and turned her head away, Mike threw himself on top of the woman and, using his thumb and forefinger, jammed the host into her mouth and down the back of her throat too deeply to be spit out.

Instantly a look of fury utterly transformed the delicate features of the woman: The jaw clenched shut, grazing the priest's fingers as he hurriedly leapt away. Her lips pulled back in an ugly snarl, the crimson eyes bulging in their sockets at the outrage. Her entire jaw appeared to be lengthening, thickening; her even white teeth growing to sharp, elongated points, protruding from gums that had now turned bluish-black.

"Satan!" Mike enjoined forcefully: "By heaven be ye exorcized! By earth be ye exorcized! In the name of God and Christ Jesus I command you, _come out of that woman!"_

The bulging throat erupted, the clenched jaw unclenching to release a torrent of evil-smelling vomit upon which rode the hated little wafer. It spewed out like magma expurgated from the bowels of hell, a fountain of bile that covered Mike, Joe and the woman herself with a stinking greenish-black liquor.

"Fuck you asshole!" that which had been Marija bellowed, the voice a deep unearthly bass that sounded as if it were echoing up from a bottomless well.

Joe pushed the crucifix at her again, but the beast within appeared to be gaining strength, becoming more resistant to the sacred power of the cross. She snarled, withdrawing only slightly this time.

While the other man kept the demon occupied, the priest pulled out the incense he had stashed in the deep pockets of his woolen jacket, his hands shaking. Using the parts of the black cake that had crumbled during his struggle up the hill, the priest made a circle in the dirt around the supine woman, lighting each piece of the fragrant resin in turn, hoping to trap the monster that possessed her within a pungent ring of sacred smoke.

During the past few minutes, the far-off wailing of sirens had begun to intrude into their consciousness, the sounds gradually growing louder and closer. Joe, suddenly remembering the multitude of small lightning fires that had been set during the freak storm earlier, now became aware that there was a strong smell of wood smoke combining with the odor of the burning incense.

_Shit_ , he swore under his breath. This new external threat added a whole new dimension to their situation: the exorcism had to be completed soon, or the fires would have them completely surrounded.

_We've got to discover the name of the deity this demon most fears,_ Muldoon realized, his thought conveyed instantly to Joe's mind. _That name, plus his own, are what we really need to invoke in order to bind and exorcize him. The rest of this stuff_ , he indicated the burning incense, the crucifix in the other man's hands; _are simply artifacts which buy us a little time, help us keep him under control until we can figure those names out and get rid of him._

_Unfortunately time is one thing we don't have a whole lot of,_ Joe thought, looking at the sky. Mike glanced up as well. A reddish glow encompassed them on three sides, replacing the blackness with an ominous doomsday hue. Brighter spots and flares could be seen here and there where the fires raged out of control beyond the crest of the nearby hills. Even as they watched, the smoke thickened and a fine mist of ash began to dust their heads and shoulders.

A subdued, distant crackle could be heard through the thin night air, and though the temperature immediately within their narrow ravine remained abnormally frigid, they could see where the heat from the approaching conflagration was distorting the surrounding atmosphere into wavering streams, sucking currents of heated air into the cooler strata above.

Mike blew on his stiff aching fingers to warm them, casting one more worried glance at the burning forest before returning his attention to the task before them.

The dragon was leering out at him through Marija's blood colored eyes, a sarcastic grimace distorting her misshapen, twisted face.

"Fuck you, priest!" The hollow voice rumbled. "You'll never get rid of me: I _like_ it in here. Besides, weren't you excommunicated? You're not even a _real_ priest anymore," he laughed derisively.

With a gleeful snort, the monster began contorting the woman's body, heaving the hips and red-stained pubic area up and down in a grotesque parody of fornication. The slender delicate hands reached to her chest and convulsively grasped the cotton blouse, ripping it open and tearing apart the flimsy lace brassiere beneath. She began to knead her soft, full breasts until the nipples stood erect and rigid with excitement, all the while rolling her hips suggestively.

"Getting turned on, cocksucker?" The heavy voice sneered. "You know you wanted it: now you're no longer a priest, what's stopping you? Come on, take me!" Then whipping the woman's head around to face Joe on the other side, it tormented: "How about you, hubby? Don't you want to fuck your little bride? What about a threesome, hmmm?"

The mouth that had once smothered his in tender kisses, opened wide in ugliness, emitting a keening squeal of derision, the sound that of a pig at slaughter. Her black ribbon of tongue flicked out an amazing length, lapping playfully at his genital area.

It was too much.

A cold shaking rage overtook the man, replacing the pain and fear with a killing fury. But as Joe raised the heavy crucifix above his head like a club, intending to smash her skull in, he felt a muscular grip on his arm, staying his hand.

_No Joe,_ Michael warned, his thought piercing the other man's anger. _"Don't you see that's what he_ _wants_ _us to do? If we kill her body with him inside it, we can never exorcise him from her: Marija will be his forever...and so will we. If we kill her, he will not only possess_ _her_ _soul for all eternity, but our own as well by our act._

As Joe slowly lowered the cross, tears pooling in his downcast eyes, Mike extracted the book on white magic from his coat, flipping to the glossary of deities. He was prepared to recite every name on the list – providing the fire didn't envelope them first – from the gods of ancient Egypt and Babylonia through the entire litany of saints in the _Rituale Romanum_ until he found the one holy being that this horrible incubus would bend to.

In actual fact it took only a few seconds, for when he reached the seventh entry under "monotheistic deities," calling out _Jehovah_ , the demon shrank within the body of the woman, momentarily restoring her normal features as he threw her arms protectively across his eyes.

"Jehovah, from Hebrew JHVH, _he that is_ ," Mike intoned aloud. "Jehovah!" He repeated, pronouncing the name again more forcefully to test the reaction of the demon for verity. The body he occupied writhed and began to flip-flop on the ground like a beached fish, gasping in apparent distress.

"That's it!" Michael exclaimed triumphantly, starting at once to thumb through the last few pages of the tome, looking for the roster of demon's names to begin that quest. But before he reached those pages he paused, struck by the hope that perhaps, from the beast's reaction to "Jehovah," invoking that name alone might be enough to exorcise him. Maybe he wouldn't need to find and evoke the devil's own title as well.

He was all too aware of the sky reddening around them, growing brighter with each passing moment; of the sibilant thunder exploding through the forest, ever closer and louder as it devoured trees and brush with a hungry ferocity. Time was running out: He decided to go for it.

"Hear me, Satan! In Jehovah's name, I order you to come out of this woman!" He commanded loudly, drawing a worried glance from Joe, who still held the crucifix above his prostrate wife.

In response Marija's body again started to flail wildly, then went totally limp. An odd, soundless hush fell over the little ravine, and in the midst of it the woman's body began to rise slowly from the ground.

"By Jehovah be ye exorcised!" the priest yelled even more forcefully.

But the body continued to rise.

With a growing sense of desperation, Muldoon shouted: "In the name of Jehovah, I bind thee!"

The woman's supine form paused now, floating nearly five feet off the ground.

"In the name of Jehovah I exorcise thee!" he screamed.

Marija's face turned toward the two men, staring at them with cold dead eyes. The lips bent into the faintest hint of a smile as her body revolved slowly in their direction. Two pale flaccid arms reached out towards them. Then she was flung, as unresisting as a rag doll, headfirst into a thirty foot high boulder that filled the base of the ravine to their right.

The men stared in stunned horror as blood poured from the woman's shattered nose, staining her exposed breasts in a dark red flood and spraying off in wet droplets onto the ground below. Still floating, she was suddenly jerked up into a vertical position and hurled back across the narrow gorge toward them, bouncing off the shoulder of the startled priest with such force that it knocked him to the ground. Abruptly she switched directions, once more flying loose-limbed and helpless toward a second self-immolation against the granite face of the large boulder that filled the center of the hollow.

Dropping the cross, Joe leapt as if released from a spring, grabbing the woman about the knees with a flying tackle before she could hit the boulder's jagged surface. He tumbled with her to the ground. The strength he felt from the beast within was enormous: Even as he fought to hold her down, Joe could feel her slipping from his grasp, wrenching away.

"The cross," he cried out feverishly. "Muldoon, get the cross!'

But the priest was one step ahead of him; he'd already snatched the wooden symbol from where Joe'd dropped it and was beginning to press it down against Marija's naked chest as Joe spoke.

They could smell the sickly sweet odor of searing flesh, felt their guts being torn by the screams of pain that seemed to go on and on before the woman finally sagged into unconsciousness beneath their grip.

"Oh my God, what have we done to her," Joe cried, lifting himself off the body of his wife and snatching the cross from her smoking chest with his free hand.

A blackened outline of the crucifix was emblazoned between her soft pale breasts, the charred areas fissured with raw, seeping scars where the pinkish meat of her flesh showed through the darkly crinkled skin.

Her eyes were closed, and her breath struggled weakly through the once delicate nose, now hideously bent to one side. It released a steady stream of dark red blood which ran down through the lines on either side of her mouth, dribbling over her jaw line and down her neck to congeal in a thick sticky mass among the strands of her fine dark hair.

"Marija!" He cried, weeping.

_It's not Marija, not anymore,_ cautioned Mike telepathically. _Now hold the cross over her, close to her face. We've got to keep this monster in check or he'll kill her before we find out his name and complete the exorcism._

As Joe complied, Michael began to read from the book of white magic again, intoning the names of all known demons from its glossary, all the while watching attentively for the slightest reaction from the possessed woman.

"Tiamat, Set, Pazuzu, Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Mephistoheles, Maara, Ahriman, Nemeroth, Iblis, Abaddon..."

A tree exploded and fell nearby, near enough that they could feel the heat, witness the sudden brightening of the sky as its sparks and embers flew in all directions.

_Hurry_ , Joe implored him.

Mike finished the list without result, then doggedly went through it again, reading each successive name with increasing urgency: Still nothing, not a blink, not a sigh. _Nothing_!

"Do you think he's still in there?" Joe asked aloud. "Maybe you got rid of him the first time after all."

As if in answer the woman's eyes opened and the red orbs of the beast glittered out wickedly. But aside from that it made no overt move. It seemed to be waiting now...perhaps for the fire to finish off the work it had begun.

"Damn, what do we do now?" Mike despaired, slamming the book closed. I was so sure I'd find it! I was half expecting it to be Iblis, since that's the name it responded to at the seance."

_Maybe this isn't the same demon,_ Joe thought _. Or maybe Satan has many faces, many names, all part of a single entity. And if so, perhaps the one we're dealing with here is the big gun, the papa-san, the original antagonist of Man... with a name that_ _isn't_ _known._

"Of course _!"_ The priest yelped, slapping the book against his palm, his voice all but lost in the roar of the approaching conflagration. _It's the final battle._

Joe looked at him quizzically.

I'll explain later...but you're right about who it is we're up against here.

Joe glanced at the red eyed beast peering up at them quizzically from the woman's battered face, and turned his head slightly to help mask his thoughts and emotions. _I don't know if this will help, but_ _when I started checking into the occult, after MJ's first supernatural episode I learned that one could supposedly summon up Satan by reciting the Lord's Prayer backward. I even tried it,_ he admitted sheepishly; _but luckily nothing happened, so I figured it was a crock. Now I think maybe I understand_ _why_ _it didn't work. I think you have to_ _pronounce_ _each word backwards as well, as if you were reading them in a mirror._

_In a mirror?_ Michael mused. _You mean as if...as if Satan is the_ _mirror image of God_ _??! Oh dear lord_ _yes_ _,_ he recognized at last, shaking his head with the astounding realization: _That which twists the Truth into a lie so deceptively close, yet so utterly opposite, that one cannot tell which is which: Being the mirror image of God's word is exactly how he deceives mankind so perfectly and so completely._

_Then if Satan is the perfect mirror image of God,_ Joe added excitedly; _and if the name of the God that this demon most fears is Jehovah, then the demon's name must be..._ he paused, both men struggling with the transposition; _Havohej! He who is_ _not_ _!_ They cried aloud in unison.

The woman's eyes opened wider, but where before there had been a coolly mocking hatred, there now was fear. Her back began rapidly to arch in a convulsed tetany, bending at the waist like a hunter's bow, threatening to snap in two. Joe pressed the cross closer to her face, but that only kept her head down. The back continued to bend alarmingly, while her mouth screamed blasphemies unto the heavens. Out of the corner of his eye, Joe noticed the priest incongruously tearing off his jacket.

"Here, help me put this over her," he ordered.

"What for?" Joe yelled back, straining to press her belly down to keep her from breaking her spine.

"it's soaked with holy water; might help, Michael explained, flinging the garment over her torso. Immediately the rigid form relaxed, collapsing back onto the ground in a crumpled heap.

"Havojeh! He who is not!" Michael shouted over the crackling thunder of the fire, now exploding trees a mere one hundred yards beyond the barren ridge above them. "In the name of Jehovah, He who _is_ , I find thee! Havojeh, he who is NOT; in Jehovah's name I exorcise thee!"

A tremendous wailing shriek split the air as the female's body jerked violently, throwing Joe to one side. From the place between her splayed legs an eerie light appeared, rapidly becoming a whirling reverse vortex of the light that had gone into her earlier. As it eddied outward and up, they could see within its cloudy glow the trapped fury of the vanquished dragon raging impotently at them as he rose higher and higher, until he and the beam of violet light finally disappeared altogether, back into the black void beyond the sky.

Behind lay his discarded pawn on the bloodstained earth, the woman called Marija, battered, broken, and barely breathing

Chapter 17

Saturday, June 17th

San Francisco

The heavy jowled homicide inspector retrieved the folded newspaper from his desk where Detective Muñoz had tossed it with a terse "Read it and weep," a moment before.

"Go ahead, read it," the desk sergeant urged with a wink at Muñoz. "It's a cosmic enema for your favorite case."

The older man sighed and opened the afternoon edition with a sneer. "Which?" he growled at Muñoz, who was hovering behind his left shoulder.

The detective reached over and poked a stubby finger at the top of the page: "Headline story, man; page one."

"Freak Electrical Storm Sets off Wildfire in Mt. Diablo Park. Three Campers Missing."

"So?" he snarled.

"So _read_ it," Muñoz repeated in exasperation.

Lieutenant Grogran read: "A freak electrical storm hit central Contra Costa County late last night, downing power lines between Alamo and San Ramon and starting a number of flash fires throughout the heavily wooded area immediately surrounding Mr. Diablo State Park. Hardest hit was the park itself, where three San Francisco residents, apparently trapped in a remote area near the north gate, are missing and presumed dead as a result of the firestorms which ravaged the northern perimeter of the popular camping area."

"Nah," breathed the aging detective, shaking his head at the first inkling of what was to come. "Can't be."

Almost reluctantly, he read on: "According to park ranger Alec Harding, the electrical storm, which struck without warning from a previously cloudless sky shortly after 11:30PM Friday night, was the worst he'd seen in his twenty years of park service."

"Luckily most of our campers were in the lower campgrounds at the south end, like they're supposed to be," Harding reports; "so we were able to get them all out okay. But a little after 11PM an unidentified male came through south gate looking for some friends who he thought might be in the day area. I told him it was against park rules, but I think he went on up there anyway to see if he could find them. The lightning storm struck just after, and the fires blocked off all access to that area almost instantly so there was nothing I could do to rescue them if they were there."

"A later report from the Contra Costa Fire Department confirmed that two burned out vehicles were discovered shortly after dawn in the vicinity of the north gate entrance, one matching the description of that driven by the previously unidentified male camper. An immediate search of the area was launched, and a little after 8AM search and rescue teams found a badly charred men's jacket and a pair of women's shoes in a narrow ravine near the entrance, but no traces of the missing persons."

Detective Paul Grogan felt a queasy shock run through his bowels. Setting the paper down, he mopped the heavy film of perspiration from his brow with a stained handkerchief. "Fuck me," he whispered, taking a swallow of cold coffee from the paper cup at his elbow. Grimacing, he picked up the paper again and continued:

"In a bizarre twist to this story, the cars destroyed by the fire were identified through DMV records as belonging to two prime suspects in the _Seance Double Murder Case_ that rocked this city only two days ago, Reverend Michael Muldoon, formerly pastor of St. Jude's Parish, and Joseph R. Marten. It is speculated that the unidentified third camper was probably Marija Draekins Marten, the other suspect in the case."

"Although no trace of the missing trio has yet been found in the rugged terrain, fire department and state park officials concur that the probability of them having escaped the conflagration on foot is extremely slim, due to the speed and intensity with which the firestorms converged on the area."

"Shit! Shit shit shit!" the overweight lieutenant blew up, throwing the paper down on his desk in disgust. "Why the fuck wasn't I given a heads up on this earlier? Why am I reading about it in the goddam Tribune?!"

"I checked," Muñoz shrugged, unruffled. "So far the case still officially belongs to the CC locals, and apparently they don't share very well. So _what_ that the missing campers are prime suspects in one of our biggest open murder cases: You think these yokels want to give up the limelight to SFPD until they absolutely have to? What, and miss all this free press?"

"Well I for one don't believe it!" the older man stormed, his beefy face red with fury and frustration. "I don't believe their _disappearance_ was any fucking accident, I don't believe the three of them are lying out there under a rock like a bucket of Colonel Sanders extra crispies...and I **don't** believe my whole case has gone up in smoke just like that!"

"Believe it or don't," said the other man, suppressing a smile at the totally unintentional pun of the humorless inspector. "The firestorm was real enough, or you think they made that up too?" He popped a sunflower seed nonchalantly into his mouth, proffering the cellophane bag to Grogan, who slapped it away in disgust. "They're dead, Grogan: Case closed."

"When I see it, my young friend; when these cynical, overworked eyes gaze down on the french-fried carcasses of those three killers – flat and cold as the stainless steel dissecting tables they're laid out on – _then_ maybe I'll believe this case is closed. Until that day, it remains open."

Chapter 18

Sunday, June 18

Rome, Italy

The pair of American travelers trudged wearily up the ramp of the Italian airliner, their shoulders slumped under the weight of their impending task as much as from the weight of their duffle bags.

They paused momentarily once they reached the terminal, squinting into the early morning sun that shone through the floor to ceiling windows, then continued in a slow procession towards customs.

Both men were clean shaven, but there was slightly lighter skin around the jaw line of the taller man compared with the dark coffee hue of his forehead and cheeks. A similar white patch, more noticeable on the reddened skin of the shorter white male, lay across his upper lip and down the sides of his mouth, giving him a wistful appearance. Had anyone bothered to sniff closely, they'd have caught the unmistakable scent of wood smoke that permeated their skin, and some odor akin to burnt chicken feathers still clinging stubbornly to the crisped ends of their hair despite hasty shampoos in the Oakland terminal restroom prior to their noon departure the previous day.

Their clothes were new, clean, and somewhat rumpled from the overnight flight: they were also purposely nondescript – short-sleeved pastel polo shirts, tan polyester slacks, and cheap sports jackets slung casually over their arms.

Though physically quite different in appearance, there was yet something strikingly similar about the pair: It was a quality in their carriage, an intense almost haunted look about the eyes, as if the men had been hollowed out, scraped clean of their humanness by some incomprehensible horror and then refilled with an all-consuming purpose that went beyond any normal passion: beyond hate, beyond love, beyond fear or revenge. As they moved deliberately through the terminal that hollow fire caused more than one fellow traveler to take a second look.

The customs officer searched their canvas travel bags with extra care, made suspicious by their suppressed energy, like race horses at the gate, which he mistook for nervousness; and by their lack of the usual tourist accoutrements. But there was nothing in their bags to justify his mistrust, just underwear, socks, toiletries, a couple of changes of clothes. A bible.

"Traveling light, signori," he commented obliquely, frisking the lining of their bags with sensitive fingers.

"A rather impromptu trip of faith, I'm afraid," the priest replied lightly, clenching his fists in his pockets to keep them from shaking. "We decided at the last moment to attend the coronation of the new Pope. It _is_ today, is it not?"

"Ah yes, signore," the official assented, his attitude suddenly more cordial as he tucked their belongings back into the canvas satchels. He checked the big chrome Timex on his wrist. "You will have to hurry though, it begins in less than three hours. There are rental cars available outside," he suggested helpfully, closing their bags and waving them through. "Welcome to Italy," he called after their rapidly retreating backsides.

"Three hours," sighed Joe, once they were out of earshot. "If you are right in what you told me, if this is the only way to make sure that Marija is forever free of that beast..."

"It is," Michael assured him.

"Then somehow we must, in the three hours remaining to us, change the opinion of the entire world about the sacredness of this Pope..."

"No, just the entire College of Cardinals," the other man corrected, thinking to himself that there was probably about as much chance of that as the other. "And to stop the Papal coronation. Because if we fail..." he looked at his companion, swallowed against the rising tears, shrugged.

All they could do was try. And pray.

In a quiet room of a large Oakland hospital a woman lay sleeping. Her face and chest were swathed in bandages; her identity was swathed in mystery.

On one had seen her come in the night before, but that was not unusual, with the chaos typical of an urban ghetto hospital on a Friday night.

Someone, the admissions clerk who worried over such matters speculated, someone must know her, someone must have brought her in, but who?

She was too badly injured to have come in under her own power, the doctors concurred. She had a serious concussion, a badly broken nose and arm, and numerous bruises...not to mention a strange cross shaped third degree burn on her chest that looked as if it might have been inflicted with a branding iron.

_Spousal abuse_ , the interns concurred, nodding sagely.

Their consensus was confirmed a few hours later when a male voice called to enquire about the mystery woman's condition, but quickly hung up when pushed to give out her identity and his own.

Well, they'd all done their part, the hospital staff agreed. They could only hope that when the woman regained consciousness she'd finger the creep that did this to her so they could bring the police in on the matter and have the shitheel arrested... _if_ the woman would press charges.

Most of the time they never did.

# Part Two

### The Coronation

And all the world wondered after the beast.

Revelations 13:4

Chapter 19

Sunday June 18th

Rome, Italy

There was an aching lump in the man's throat and a heavy weight in his chest that he bent over almost protectively, holding the pain to him like a gift. It was all he had left of the woman right now, this pain and a few memories which hurt too much to look at. That, and the intermittent hope that this quest he was embarked upon - no, irrevocably committed to - might bring not only the bittersweet release of revenge but somehow bring Marija, the Marija he fell in love with, back to him.

He forced his tired legs to quicken their pace: The taller man who had shaped the design of their dubious mission had begun to outdistance him, pushing through the misty sunlight with a coldly burning passion, the single-minded determination to stop the anathema scheduled to take place within the hour.

Joe wished he could share the fervor that glittered from the priest's dark eyes, the conviction that spurred his worn, ash-blackened boots forward against the weariness that must be wobbling his limbs as much as it was Joe's by now.

At this moment what he wanted most was to get it over with and get some sleep.

The taxi they'd taken from the airport at Fumicino had let them off more than a kilometer from St Peter's Square, across the Tiber from Castle San Angelo.

They'd crossed the Tiber – the sluggish slate blue river that dissected and immortalized the eternal city to which it had given birth – over an ancient arched stone bridge. There were no cars on the bridge today, just a steady stream of pilgrims heading west as they were. Roadblocks had been set up the night before across all arteries and thoroughfares leading to Vatican City, and only official Vatican limousines and those of card-carrying dignitaries were allowed to proceed inside the city gates...plus of course the media in their satellite uplink trucks and production vans, who always had a free pass anywhere these days it seemed.

_Anyone else who wants to witness the historic coronation of the world's first auxiliary Pope will just have to hoof it: There's no special parking for the handicapped today_ , Joe mused sardonically.

Early morning sunlight radiated off pastel stucco buildings on either side of the broad avenue giving them a golden honeyed glow that was almost ethereal. Muldoon took in the beauty of this scene with an ironic expression, barely bending his tightly set lips into a bitter smile. _It's come full circle_ , he thought, _this holy city, built over the site where the first Christians provided bloody entertainment for the elite of Rome within the snapping jaws of half-starved lions_. He shook his head.

The Vatican had been erected over what had been Roman emperor Nero's public gardens and circus: This was where many of the early Christians had been martyred and where, according to Catholic tradition, Saint Peter himself was crucified and buried. Over his very tomb, it was said, the main altar of St. Peter's Basilica now stood.

" _Mystery Babylon the Great,"_ Michael thought, shivering despite the warmth of the day. _"Drunken with the blood of saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus..."_

He hadn't realized he was speaking aloud until Joe stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm, a questioning look.

"Nothing," he shook his head, smiling ruefully.

As the two men neared the narrow entrance of the keyhole-shaped plaza that widened into St. Peter's Square, the sudden press of the crowd became stultifying. The combined heat of thousands of hurrying, sweaty, anxious bodies turned the air around them into an oven. Joe felt slightly giddy, nauseated. The buildings on either side loomed up huge and overpowering, then flickered and danced in his vision.

More than forty hours without sleep was taking its toll on him, erasing the steadying effect of physical reality and substituting in its stead a dreamlike insubstantial quality to the structure of the world around him.

The crowd thinned slightly as it poured from the bottleneck of the gateway into the broad plaza, giving the two companions a momentary sense of expansiveness and relief. But less than fifty yards ahead the mass of humanity again drew tightly packed as the pilgrims pressed relentlessly forward towards the Basilica at the fair end of the immense square. It was there that the momentous and purportedly miraculous event they had all come to witness was to take place within minutes...unless the two Americans could find a way to prevent it.

"Mike," Joe called above the murmuring roar coming from the river of people that swept them along. "We'll never get through this crowd in time! How can we ever hope to stop this thing?

He immediately hated the way his voice had sounded: the despairing, self-pitying whine of it. He sounded like a tired and petulant child. There had just been so much lately, so damn much...he swallowed hard against the threatening tears.

Muldoon stopped to consider his friend carefully. The hard glitter faded from his eyes for a moment, revealing the compassion and understanding that comprised the essential core of the man.

"I know, Joe," he said, his voice a sighing whisper that somehow carried above the noise of the crowds, his words encompassing not just their present dilemma but the whole of the other man's misery, their shared misery and loss.

He broke eye contact then, the pain too personal. Above them in the center of the piazza towered the tall red granite obelisk, pointing like an accusing finger toward heaven: To each side were majestic double colonnades that encircled the huge open quad, drawing the worshippers forward like embracing arms to the majestic basilica at its head. Along the roof of each colonnade were a series of great marble statues – some badly decayed, yet still awe-inspiring – which embodied the saints and apostles marching in eternal procession toward the tomb of St. Peter. Stately, serene, their frozen expressions of divine piety served to remind the world of the sacred tradition they guarded. To the priest, their sightless marble eyes seemed to glare down at him in silent accusation, as if they knew his purpose and were already condemning him for it.

But for his _intention_ , or for his failure to accomplish it?

"Let's go around to the side," he told Joe, turning from the accusing eyes of the saints. "Maybe we can find a way through to the Vatican offices."

He consulted the pocket-sized Baedeker guidebook he'd picked up at the airport, which had a map of Vatican City inside. "If we try to stop this travesty out here in the square, in the middle of the ceremony," he cautioned, taking Joe by the elbow and beginning to edge the two of them toward the perimeter; "we'll get ourselves arrested and deported, if not stoned. I think our best bet is to find someone in authority, high up enough to have some clout...maybe even the Secretary of State himself. Then we only have to convince _him_ to stop this thing, or at the very least postpone it until there can be a full investigation of our charges."

"If there's anyone in authority left who hasn't already been corrupted into believing this iniquity," Joe responded grimly. "Maybe it's too late, Mike, maybe we already lost." He was remembering Marija, the crimson eyes of the beast inside her flashing hatred where once had been tenderness. Would he ever be able to forget that, to see her the same way he had before, even if she returned to her old self?

It wasn't until they were somewhere over the polar ice cap on their hurried flight to Rome that Mike had at last filled him in on the full scope of what was happening at the Vatican, and of how the possession of Marija and their own involvement in the battle with Satan to save her fit into the opening salvos of a much greater war.

"Look Joe," the priest had said, bringing out his slightly singed Bible from the overnight bag and turning to the last chapter; "This is what I was coming to tell you and Marija..." his voice had caught on her name, and he swallowed hard before continuing. "It's all here in Revelations."

Even though he'd accepted what the priest had told him after they'd escaped the fire, enough at least to agree to accompany him to Rome, Joe had found his mind whirring with an overload of information and emotion when Mike had started explaining fully the prophecies and their portent. He was consumed with worry over his wife, who he'd unceremoniously dumped in the hospital emergency room hours earlier, not knowing if she'd live or die; and while wanting to justify that act by believing in this divine spiritual mission they were embarked on, still a part of him fought to hold onto some kind of reality as a stable reference point against this maelstrom of supernatural incursions.

So what if there were two "beasts" trying to take over the worldwide Catholic Church, what did that have to do with him and MJ?

"Okay," Muldoon had acknowledged, as if Joe had expressed these reservations aloud. "Maybe this next section will bring it all together for you."

He'd flipped through several more pages until he came to the allegory about the Whore of Babylon, then handed the black leather book to Joe, explaining the text as Joe read silently to himself.

"The seven mountains upon which the woman sits," he said patiently; "are the seven hills of Rome. It _has_ to be Rome; which is the only famous city on Earth with seven hills, plus it was a center of Christianity at the time this was written, don't you see?"

Joe nodded contemplatively.

"And here it speaks of a scarlet colored beast with ten horns that the whore – The Vatican, if you will – sitteth upon. In the newspaper it said that there were ten Cardinal Bishops in the secret consistory that elected the new Auxiliary Pope, Joe, and they all wore _red_....Scarlet! This is the same beast described earlier in Chapter thirteen."

"And here," he pointed to another verse on the page; "where it says that the great whore sitteth on many waters, and these waters represent peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues – this indicates a state or organization which has world wide impact. So you tell me, Joe, what other religious, political or financial institution has reached its fingers of influence and power into so many areas of the world as has the Roman Catholic Church?"

"Think about it, who _else_ could be the whore of Babylon? What other entity fits so well, especially when it's the spiritual world we're talking about, not the temporal world. It's _got_ to be Vatican City, Joe. The Whore is what the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church will become, the seat of power for Satan, if Havohej's plan to put his beasts on the Papal throne is carried out."

Joe had nodded with reluctant but growing belief. If this was what it was all about, okay then: He'd come to the right place to avenge Marija, and possibly save her. That's all he really cared about.

Now, here in the very shadow of Saint Peter's, as they pushed and wiggled their way through the endless tides of the faithful, the not-so-faithful and the merely curious, on their way to find someone with the authority and willingness to stop the coronation of the second beast, to stop the final transfer of the vast spiritual, political and financial power of the Catholic Church into the teeth of the dragon, Joe still thought mainly of that revenge.

Chapter 20

Sunday June 18th

San Francisco

Lieutenant Paul Grogan was not a particularly genial man. At his best – usually after the Raiders won a football game, provided he'd had the afternoon off to watch it - he was gruffly cheerful. At his worst he was a blazing asshole, as his former wife had pointed out fifteen years earlier when she'd made her final exit from his life.

Today his mood ranged somewhere between Ivan the Terrible and Godzilla. Even Detective Muñoz, who'd learned to roll with the verbal punches over the years, had gladly parted company with a twenty dollar bill to get the day officer to fake an assignment that would get him out of going with Grogan to the fire scene.

Before he left, Grogan put in a call to the Contra Costa County sheriff in charge of the investigation. In a moment the tired, patient, softly-accented voice of Sheriff Cardenza came on the line.

"Yes, Lieutenant Grogan, what may I do for you?" he enquired.

"You found 'em yet, Sheriff?"

"You mean the three missing campers?"

"Campers my ass! Gimme a break, Cardenza – those people are cold-blooded murderers!"

"Oh, there has been a trial already then?"

"All right, cold blooded murder _suspects_ , then... _alleged_ murder suspects; and in your book simply alleged accident victims, I suppose. But they're damned good murder suspects, let me tell you, and I'm not about to let them off the hook on the supposition that they might have been victims of some damned brush fire. So tell me, Sheriff, any positive evidence of their _allegedly_ incinerated carcasses yet?"

"No Lieutenant, nothing so far."

"Then I'm coming out there, Cardenza. I want to take a look at the scene myself, if you don't mind."

"Suit yourself, _Grogan_. Do you want me to meet you there?"

After the call to Cardenza, Grogan immediately punched the button to connect with the communications officer in the station exchange.

"This is Grogan. Page Muñoz and tell him to get his ass up here on the double." He hung up without waiting for an acknowledgement. Muñoz appeared almost at once.

"What's up, sir." He knew when to wear polite.

"Put out an APB on Muldoon and the Martens's statewide, then start checking all points of egress from the bay area: buses, taxis, airlines, the works. You can reach me through the CC Sheriff's department if you come up with anything. Not sure how well my cell will work out in the park."

He jammed on a dirty, baseball cap and squirmed his bulk into a nondescript cloth trench coat which had grown noticeably smaller over the years. Then he scooped the contents of his desktop indiscriminately into the coat's oversized pockets.

He took a moment to light the disheveled looking RoiTan he'd been grinding between his yellowed teeth half the morning, peering over the flame at his unmoving assistant.

"Well, what're you waiting for, Muñoz, a gilt edged manifesto? Get your lazy ass moving!" he belched out in a cloud of pungent smoke.

Chapter 21

Sunday, June 18th

The Vatican

The two Americans pressed forward through the crowds beneath the right colonnade, Mike leading the charge as they edged toward the inner wall of the huge covered arcade. Next to its granite columns squatted a group of full-bosomed mothers blithely nursing their chubby infants while withered old men leaned against the cool pillars as if for support, leering sidewise at the happy show of breasts. Further out from the wall lumpy old women in flowered dresses shifted their weight, fanning themselves distractedly against the heat.

A hundred feet further on beneath the open-faced passageway, the men came upon the Portone di Bronzo, a huge bronze door flanked by a small ticket office and two young Swiss Guards. This, according to the guidebook, was the main entrance to the Vatican Palace. Beyond this door lay a vast, ornate chamber which, though far from deserted, was much less congested than the Piazza. As they moved inside it, the priest found himself dumbstruck by the incredible grandeur of religious art that assaulted him from all sides. Hurrying down the long Corridoro del Bernini toward the broad staircase at its far end, the gilt and glory stared down from every square inch of the vaulted ceiling, every carved, lighted niche along the frescoed walls, literally taking his breath away. It was like walking inside a work of art:

Magnificent murals depicted Biblical scenes, mostly saints being martyred, Mike observed wryly, which seemed to stare down at the effrontery of these men with their cheap clothes, dirty boots and fire-singed hair, their blemished souls and secret purpose. "What are you _doing_ , Muldoon!" they screamed in their perpetual agony, their ecstatic bliss.

The priest shook his head, rubbed his eyes, steeled his resolve. It was _for_ their faith, their ultimate sacrifice, that he would do this, not against it. _I'm here to join you,_ his soul cried out; _here to preserve that for which you lived and died. One day my likeness may be painted there among you, but whether as saint or demon depends on the outcome._

He approached one of the quaintly costumed Swiss Guards who stood immobile against a marble column in his bright blue, gold and crimson striped pantaloons and blouse.

"Scuzi, signore, but could you direct me to the office of the Secretary of State, please" Muldoon requested, hoping his voice conveyed none of his inner turmoil.

"That would be across the Cortile di San Damaso, the inner courtyard," the guard answered politely, indicating the direction. "His office is on the third floor. But," he added hastily as the visitor turned to leave; "one cannot meet with His Eminence unless one has a prior appointment and is as well..." he paused, looking obliquely at the visitors' cheap polyester slacks and polo shirts, their worn boots and canvas duffle bags; "a personage of, if I may say, some importance."

"I am a priest from California, and I assure you, the business I have with His Eminence is of such urgency that the Cardinal Secretary will have no objection to this slight breach of protocol; not once he hears what I have to say."

"I am sure you are telling the truth, signore," the guard nodded somberly; "but I am afraid that any audience today, no matter how urgent, is completely out of the question. The Cardinal Secretary is in the midst of preparations for this morning's ceremony of investiture of our new Pontiff. Surely you have heard..."

"But that is precisely what we came to see the Secretary about," Joe found himself blurting. "He must be convinced to stop this ceremony; it cannot be allowed to take place!"

A short, rotund figure approaching the trio paused in his slow rolling gait upon hearing this proclamation. He stepped back into the shadows, heart beginning to accelerate at those words. Archbishop Luigi Magliano thought he was the only person in the Vatican, perhaps the only one in the entire world, who entertained any serious doubts about the impending investiture, the purported "miracles" that had shaken the Papal throne over the past ten days. But what was this now, these two strangers with their colorless clothing, their burning eyes, demanding that the investiture be stopped? Hot tears of hope sprang to the emotional Italian's eyes. "God, what might you have sent us here?" he prayed.

The arguments down the hall were getting louder, more heated. The guard sounded testy. Perhaps he should do something before these two Americans found themselves being escorted into the custody of the Italian police.

"Signori," the guard was saying in a tight angry voice; "you are being foolish in your demands, dangerously foolish. This is a holy place, a place of God, and you are coming very close to blasphemy in what you say. I must ask you to depart at once, before I am compelled to have you forcibly removed."

"Please, if I may intercede," Luigi broke in as he hurried forward, mopping at his brow with a stained handkerchief. "Allow me to introduce myself: I am Archbishop Luigi Magliano, acting public relations representative for the Vatican. The Papal Secretary is, I am afraid, not in his suite at this hour; not even in the building I assure you." This was said in a most apologetic manner as he laid a pudgy hand on the larger man's back, another on the arm of his slender companion. He began to apply a gentle pressure against the two, steering them gently away from further confrontation with the guard while talking rapidly to defuse the situation.

"Perhaps I can be of some service to you, if you would tell me what this is about."

If he was hoping for an instant exchange of confidences, a flurry of revelations, he was quickly disappointed. The imposing black man, who seemed to be the stronger of the pair, apparently had his mind set on finding the Cardinal Secretary and making his disclosers, his appeal, to that figurehead alone. For his part, Magliano was not about to risk exposing his own doubts and fears about the Pope elect to virtual strangers, not until he was sure what these two had in mind, what their actual feelings and motives were.

"You may indeed, if you will just tell me where I can find the Cardinal Secretary," Mike replied once they were out of earshot of the guard. "It is he and he alone I will tell my concerns to, only he who has sufficient power to stop this fiasco before it is too late."

"I'm afraid he's on the other side of the Piazza di San Pietro, in the Pontiff's own offices, getting ready for the ceremonial procession." Luigi answered in a low voice.

" _Are_ you afraid? You should be. We all should be," Mike challenged, turning to direct a penetrating look on the nervous little Italian. What he saw stopped him. "Perhaps," he amended more kindly, his eyes thoughtfully probing the other man's; "perhaps you really are."

"You will never get through these throngs of well wishers in time to see him," the archbishop said, lowering his eyes to avoid the stranger's perceptive gaze, the uncomfortable question he had posed; "even if he _would_ listen, which I doubt."

"We've got to try, in any case," Mike avowed grimly, taking Joe by the elbow as they turned and ran for the marble steps just beyond. He stopped halfway down the brief flight to turn his brown eyes back onto the worried face of the Italian archbishop. "Thank you, Your Excellency," he said with a nod, then hurried away."

Luigi Magliano watched the pair as they ran down the quiet, nearly deserted corridor towards the bronze door which opened onto the Piazza, their footsteps echoing loudly in the high ceilinged hall.

_Your Excellency he called me,_ Luigi thought. _He must be familiar with church protocol to know to call an archbishop by that title. Who is he, where did he come from, and what does he know?_

Then, making the sign of the cross, he began slowly and reluctantly to follow.

Chapter 22

Sunday June 18th

Mt Diablo State Park

Cardenza turned out to be tall and slender, with an aristocratic hook to his long, straight nose, full salon-cut hair and a heady intelligence behind his mutable hazel eyes. In his sharply pressed khaki uniform he looked like the poster boy for a recruitment campaign. Certainly too damn young and good looking to take crime fighting seriously, Grogan sniffed, unconsciously sucking in his own flabby girth, which only imperceptibly receded from its comfortable overhang above his rumpled trousers.

He locked up his decrepit Ford and climbed into the sheriff's unit for the ride in from the park entrance.

The line where the fire began – or ended – was as clearly marked as if it had been laid out by a surveyor's transit: On one side the scrub oak, manzanita and Monterey pine scrambled for footing in the sun, as green and vigorous as anywhere else in the park. On the other was a barren wasteland of blackened ruin. Infrequent pines stood here and there like dark sentinels over the charred remains of smaller trees and bushes, and even the rocks were covered in a pall of gray ash. In some places along the demarcation line of the fire an oak, pine or manzanita stood half-ruined, one side a blistered, black, denuded skeleton, the other side still green and alive.

"Whew," remarked Grogan as they turned onto a side road into the heart of the fire's path. "Some inferno this must have been!"

"Now maybe you can see why we thought it impossible for anyone to have escaped it on foot."

"Yeah, well..." Grogan begrudged even the smallest admission of a possible misjudgment on his part: This terse comment was all the sheriff was going to get."

The two burned out vehicles belonging to the priest and Joe Marten had already been towed over to the sheriff's substation in Danville, but Cardenza pointed out where they'd been: Muldoon's here, where the chain had blocked the road into the day camping area, and Marten's over there in the outside parking zone near the restrooms.

The sheriff pulled into a space near the north entrance where the second car had been found. Two other vehicles were already there, a cream-colored sedan with the insignia of the Contra Costa Sheriff's Department, and a red four-wheel drive truck belonging to the fire department's search and rescue unit.

"They still lookin'?" Grogran grunted with a nod towards truck.

"Still looking," Cardenza acknowledged.

The trek up the steep hillside behind the restroom made the out-of shape detective more winded than he cared to let on in front of this young powerhouse, who'd been leading the way at a killer pace. He stopped halfway up the hill, leaning against the charcoal stump of what had once been a stately pine, making an elaborate show of lighting a bedraggled cigar which his lungs needed now about as much as his belly needed another double double with fries.

Cardenza noted, with a secret grin, that the old guy didn't bother to actually inhale any smoke from the nasty thing once he'd taken an interminable time getting it going.

From the top of the ridge the youthful sheriff pointed out the spot where a jacket and other evidence had been found at the bottom of the sixty foot ravine. About forty feet in from the base of the cliff was an enormous granite boulder, some twenty feet in diameter and nearly thirty feet tall, its top rounded by wind and weather to a lumpy smoothness.

Blue circles had been drawn in two places about five feet up its southern surface, marking the area where embedded pieces of flesh, hair and blood had been discovered.

The results of preliminary DNA analyses and blood typing, cross checked against what was on file in medical records, had tentatively identified the samples as coming from the missing woman, Cardenza informed the detective. "We think she must have been fleeing from the fire and fallen over the cliff in the dark."

"You tryin' to tell me the lady fell off the cliff over here," Grogan said, nodding at the cliff edge, shifting his skeptical gaze to Cardenza, then back over to the boulder in the ravine; "and somehow managed to bash her head against that big rock forty feet away and sixty feet down, while still five feet up in the air? What is she, superwoman?"

"Well, it _is_ quite a distance," Cardenza admitted, squatting down at the edge of the cliff and idly tossing a pebble over the edge. 'but the forensics boys surmise that had she been running flat out toward the cliff when she fell..."

"At what, mach five?" Grogan threw in sarcastically.

"Well, it _is_ possible," the sheriff persisted petulantly.

"Yeah, right...anyway, how the fuck do we get down there?"

Cardenza wordlessly rose to lead the way along the edge of the ravine until they came to an arguably negotiable path that traversed the face of the cliff at a reasonable angle, ending at the bottom some fifty feet from the boulder.

"Hullo!" A man's voice rang out as they approached the scene, his footsteps crunching through the underbrush at the far side of the gully. A young blond officer in the uniform of the county sheriff's department appeared from behind the rock, fastening his belt. "I was putting out a residual hot spot," he observed cheerily. "You bring me a replacement?"

"Not exactly, Briant," the senior officer replied. "This is the chief homicide inspector from SFPD, Lieutenant Grogan. He thinks what happened here may be related to a case he's been working on in the city. I brought him over for a look-see."

"Help yourself, inspector," the deputy grinned, shaking the older man's hand. "I've already seen pretty much all there is, I think, so I'll just leave you to it. But if you have any questions just holler."

As the two men walked away Grogan could hear the Martinez-based lead investigator quizzing the local deputy about the area's likely night spots.

"Life goes on," he grunted, staring at a vague outline in the dirt before him.

He glanced over at the blue circles drawn five feet up the face of the boulder, then speculatively up at the distant top of the cliff again, shaking his head. Back his eyes went to the blue circles and then to the disturbed dirt, as if tracing the flight of the woman into the boulder.

"Shit," he concluded.

He squatted, the strain of his bulk threatening to split the seam in the shiny rear of his worn brown trousers, and began to carefully inspect the ground near where the jacket had been found.

Strange...there was a huge amount of ash and cinders rained randomly about this entire area, but unless his eyes played tricks on him, there appeared to be a little pattern in the ash as well, a thin, circle of blacker ash that encompassed the spot where the jacket had been found. He reached down and pinched a small sample of the cinder in question, holding it close to his nose and sniffing thoughtfully. The smell brought back an instant recollection of the dimly lit altar where he'd knelt with his mother every Sunday as a little boy, as the white-cassocked priest shook clouds of choking white smoke at him from a tall silver censer.

Chapter 23

Sunday, June 18th

The Vatican

The surge of the crowd beneath the hot glare of the midday sun was rough and unruly, more befitting the heathen gatherings that had crushed their way into a similar plaza two thousand years earlier, hoping for a good view of the impending bloodbath, than a group of pious worshipers gathered to witness the coronation of a twenty-first century Pope.

But a circus is a circus is a circus, no matter who the clowns.

Many had been here since the predawn hours, some since the night before, hoping to edge close enough to the procession route to receive a papal blessing from His Holiness.

_His Holiness!_ Michael Muldoon felt a desperate, almost hysterical urge to laugh at the thought.

From his experience, the man who had been the head of the San Francisco archdiocese had never been what one would call a "holy" man, never what the clergy liked to term a "priest's priest."

He had achieved the position of archbishop by being a great politician, not a great pastor, and once in that prestigious office had proved to be a pushy, snobbish, self-important dictator.

Muldoon had neither liked nor particularly agreed with many of the archbishop's policies during his tenure under the leader, but now he understood a far more distressing truth about this claimant to the throne of Peter: He was not merely a misguided liberal and egotistical over-achiever, he was the devil's own handmaiden. This man, described in Revelations as the _second beast_ , was about to be given total and absolute authority over the worldwide Catholic Church unless they could somehow stop him.

But too late! The clarion call of a score of long silver trumpets suddenly resounded through the noisy square, cutting through the hum of conversation like cold steel: The procession of the Pope had begun.

Mike grabbed for Joe's arm, but this time the smaller man was already taking the lead, pushing through the seemingly solid wall of bodies like an ice-breaker, ignoring the muted curses and protests of the people they shoved aside – protests that, had it been anywhere else, any other occasion than this most holy of holy events, might have taken a more physical form and expression. Italians were not renowned for their passivity.

All at once the two Americans found themselves at the boundary of a thirty-foot wide avenue formed by two shoulder-to-shoulder columns of brightly costumed Papal Guards, who held back the pressing sea of bodies on either side like a human dike.

Eighty feet away and moving toward them came the papal throne carried on the arms of six brawny Swiss Guards, its golden canopy jerking twenty feet above the heads of the worshipers as they marched in slow cadence, bearing their precious burden toward the entrance of Saint Peter's Basilica.

"What do we do?" Joe shouted into the priest's ear above the din of the wildly cheering crowd as the fringed canopy moved inexorably closer.

"I don't know; I-don't-know!" Michael cried in response desperation in his voice

Just then the portable throne swung around slightly in its snaking path through the assemblage, coming into full frontal view of the pair. The priest found himself looking up into the icy steel of Pope Sixtus's eyes, and a white-hot shock tore up his spine and exploded in his brain.

His mouth opened of its own accord and words not of his own making poured forth above the noisome cacophony surrounding him:

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy!

"Hey hey, what is this!" a portly, well dressed man beside them growled in astonishment

"What'd he say? What's he talking about?" a pretty blond nearby questioned her companion.

But the austere figure on the canopied throne heard: He knew. And his eyes began to blaze with a cold fire as they looked for the source of the disturbance.

_And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded unto death,_ Michael continued defiantly: _and his deadly wound was healed: And all the world wondered after the beast: and they worshiped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshiped the beast, saying 'who is like unto the beast?_

Pope Sixtus's eyes located and met those of the priest. The hate emanating from his flat gray irises was a palpable force of evil, and Joe felt a wave of nausea pass through his bowels – something akin to fear but dangerously close to awe. The crowd nearby was growing threatening, but Michael seemed totally unaware of their presence.

And all that dwell upon the earth shall worhip him, whose names are not written in the book of life.

Someone from behind them made a grab at the speaker: A burly, deeply-tanned Italian who looked like a longshoreman...probably _was_ a longshoreman. Joe reached out and swatted the aggressor away as if he were a small child.

The procession had stopped directly in front of the pair now. The Swiss Guards and gendarmerie, their hands already full holding back people trying to push their way through the line for a closer look at the Pope, could do nothing to thwart the disturbance behind them.

A crimson-robed church official – probably one of the Vatican's cardinal deacons, was setting afire a small bundle of flax fibers tied atop a long thin reed at the side of the portable throne, speaking the traditional words of homage in Latin: _sic transit gloria mundi..._ "Holy Father, thus passes the glory of the world."

Michael's voice rang forth above the deacon's invocation, strong and commanding:

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast whose deadly wound was healed!

His finger was pointing directly at Sixtus in condemnation:

_If any man have an ear, let him hear...for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,_ _against spiritual wickedness in high places_ _!_

For a moment everything stopped. Time froze and they stepped away from it, these three: the new Pope, resplendent in his white silk robes, his tall pointed miter embroidered in golden thread, his ornately jeweled papal clasp...and the two Americans in their dusty slacks, their rumpled polo shirts.

Then the scene trembled as if a wave had passed through reality, and the curtain of illusion dropped. The Pope's tall peaked cap became a crown of horns; the white silken robes of office vanished, exposing a thick skin encrusted in green scales beneath. The coldly handsome face became a reptilian fantasy from some grotesque horror film: flattened nostrils in place of the thin aquiline nose; black-ridged plates of bone above the brows and covering the high cheek bones. Two enormous almond-shaped eyes glowed with wicked red light from the distorted dragon face, as the wide lipless mouth pulled back to expose a line of long dagger-like teeth in an angry snarl.

"Don't you _see_ it?" Joe screamed at the sea of frozen faces around them. "Can't you see what he truly is?"

But the faces remained rapt, caught in a stop-action frame in which the image of the serenely magnificent Pope-elect was all they saw, all they would ever see.

Suddenly the demon threw back his huge serpentine head and laughed, a terrible evil crowing call of triumph and derision, his long narrow black tongue snaking wickedly at the sky.

Time abruptly restored her grip on existence, sound and movement returned to the mundane world like a video clip that has started forward again after the pause. Pope Sixtus resumed his papal identity, the procession began its slow trek forward, and Joe and Mike were left behind, standing in shock with mouths agape that no one else had seen the truth.

But the nearby crowd had not forgotten about _them_ It was as if Mike's last entreaty, quoted from Ephesians, had just left his lips. Several men were jostling the pair of troublemakers, grabbing at them angrily and shouting curses in Italian that needed no translation. A matron in a red print dress spat in Mike's face.

Joe began pulling at his companion's arm, urging him away from confrontation with the hostile group, dragging him back toward the left colonnade where people were unaware of the furor that had been created by their pronouncements against the demon to whom all these fools had come to pay blind homage.

The worshippers seemed willing to let them go, turning their attention back to the pomp of the ceremonial procession. But one man followed at a discreet distance, one man who had heard their words, seen the biting hatred in the look the new Pontiff had given his accusers. He had even been vaguely aware of the momentary blurring of time, the wavery sensation that had passed through the world and then was gone. He hadn't been near enough to witness the transformation of Sixtus into the beast, but he'd felt it happen in his gut. And the things the tall dark American had said had exploded into a gut-level awareness as well, an awakening.

So Magliano continued to follow them as he had since their meeting in the Vatican Palace; he followed them like a man who's been searching for answers without knowing the question and who has at last heard the exact question posed. Whether of not they had any answers to that question, any solution, he did not yet know, but at the very least he knew he was meant to aid them in their quest, whatever the final outcome.

Chapter 24

Sunday June 18th

Mt. Diablo State Park

Detective Grogan held the pinch of incense to his nose, still savoring the smell.

"Cardenza!" He bellowed, waiting in the same squatting position for the sheriff to come running. "You got any evidence bags on you?"

"Briant?" The sheriff asked hopefully, chagrined that the inspector had managed to find something they'd missed after all.

"Got a couple of little ones left," Deputy Briant said, fumbling through his jacket pockets until he fished out a pair of small plastic bags.

Grogan waddled around the circle of ash, gathering up samples of the burnt incense.

"Note it down, Cardenza," he puffed in satisfaction. "There is a perfect circle of burnt incense here – _fragrant resin_ , if you prefer – indicating some kind of religious rite was performed either before or after the alleged accident."

He got up, grimacing at the arthritic pain that shot through his lower legs as circulation was restored. Handing the bags to the sheriff, who promptly turned them over to the deputy and followed worriedly behind the investigator, Grogan began a systematic inspection of the narrow canyon from one end to the other.

Two hundred feet south of the boulder the gorge abruptly ended in a sheer wall of rock down which groundwater seeped in green and orange stains. The west side of the canyon, directly opposite that down which the woman had apparently fallen was covered in heavy brush, much of which had somehow been spared the ravages of the fire: but close inspection showed that the cliff towering behind the skirts of sage and manzanita was as steep and unscalable as the other canyon wall. This left only the far northern end to explore. From where he stood, the ravine at that end narrowed to a point that seemingly closed off altogether,

"What's down that way?" Grogan asked, pointing with the smoldering end of his cigar.

"It dead ends, if I remember right. Briant?" The in charge passed the buck to the local boy again.

"Yeah, squeezes right down to a little gap, barely big enough for a full grown man to push hisself into. After five or six feet it stops altogether. The way we figure, the only way the campers could have got out of this canyon is the way they came in, on that same little trail you and Cardenza just came down, and we know anyone going out that way wouldn't have stood a chance of making through the firestorm."

"Do you?" Grogan gave the deputy a hard look, held it long enough that he could almost see the young man's balls shrivel. "Let's go have a peek, shall we?"

The gap mentioned by the deputy was small all right, and did seem to end about six feet into the rocky cliff. But Grogan was never one to take something for granted. He squeezed his large bulk into the crack, inching slowly forward. As he neared what had first appeared to be the end of the tiny chasm, he discovered that rather than ending it made an abrupt left turn, gradually widening as it proceeded.

"Cardenza, squeeze your scrawny ass in here after me!" He yelled back over his shoulder. "I think I've found our so-called fire victims' escape route."

He and the sheriff followed the narrow gorge through its tortuous path, finally emerging into open country more than a mile from where they began. Fifty feet behind them the land was in blackened ruin, but ahead it was lush and green. They were out of the fire zone. Two miles further on, down the left side of the gently rolling foothills, they could see a gray ribbon of asphalt winding through the broad valley. Highway 24! The three murder suspects could be anywhere by now!

"Mexy, you cost me a day and a half," Grogran muttered.

Chapter 25

Sunday June 18th

The Vatican

By the time the Italian archbishop pushed his squat sweaty body through the packed crowd in St Peter's Square, the Americans had already disappeared from his view, as had the Pope-elect, who'd been carried up the broad stone steps of the massive cathedral and into its central chamber with only a minimal amount of tipping and tilting to sour his otherwise studied expression of piety.

Magliano moved slowly along the shadowy causeway toward the entrance to St. Peter's, his worried brown eyes scanning the crowds for a glimpse of the pair he'd been tagging.

Within the church, he knew, the ceremony of homage would soon be taking place; all the scarlet-robed cardinals coming forward in turn to bow before the new Pope and kiss his foot; this done in front of a small select audience of some forty thousand or so important church officials, lay people and media representatives. Significantly Magliano himself had been omitted from the guest list – a slight that was unheard of for an archbishop of Rome and member of the Vatican's diplomatic corps.

"Ah, just as well," he sighed, giving a disparaging tweak to the tip of his mustache. "I want no part of what is going on in there today."

Still a part of him felt let down, left out – the kid peering longingly through the hedge at a playmate's birthday party, wondering if his invitation got lost in the mail.

Before long the formal display of homage would be complete and the high mass begun, with Pope Sixtus officiating at the enormous altar in the central cathedral, his tall soldierly figure diminished somewhat by the elaborate bronze baldacchino that the great artist Bernini had constructed in the seventeenth century. Above him would tower the magnificent central dome designed by Micheangelo himself, soaring like a spirit more than four hundred feet from the floor of the nave to crown. Its size and grandeur were enough to make any mortal feel his own insignificance, but somehow Magliano doubted it was having that effect on Sixtus: Nothing was large enough to challenge an ego of such proportions.

Pope Sixtus VI looked over the rows of cardinals kneeling before him, heads bowed and eyes closed, waiting for him to deliver the holy sacrament of communion, and he smiled benignly. All members of the sacred college were present to receive the traditional bread and wine, with the exception of the four highest ranking cardinal bishops who officiated with him at this ceremony.

"This is my body," he murmured in Latin, holding aloft the symbolic wafer of unleavened bread. "This is my blood," he intoned over the silver chalice of unconsecrated wine, blessing it. "This do in remembrance of me."

As he started to dip the first small wafer into the wine, he looked into the black ruby depths of the chalice and saw staring up from the inky liquid a pair of almond shaped crimson eyes with vertical slits for pupils.

" _This is_ _my_ _blood_ ," one of the eyes winked, and the wine became a pool of blood filled with gruesome slithery crawling things that splattered about wetly in the thick demonic liquor; " _and with it,"_ (as Sixtus placed the soaked wafer on the first cardinal's outstretched tongue) _I am become your master, bloodmaster over this unholy city and its unholy servants who shall hence carry my sacrament back to all the peoples of the world."_

Beyond the walls of the basilica Magliano's private worries about the ceremony within were cut short by a minor disturbance near the base of the steps that led to the broad portico framing the entrance to Saint Peter's Cathedral. He hurried his pace.

Yes, it was the two Americans! He could just see them now, in some sort of confrontation with one of the navy-blue-and-white uniformed gendarmes posted about the front entrance to keep out the uninvited. Two more guards were approaching the trio curiously.

Magliano pushed through the throng of people, all but omitting entirely his manners save a few perfunctory nods and indecipherable mumbled apologies to those unfortunate enough to be in his way. He was on the verge of hailing the guards, interceding again on the strangers' behalf, when a slender arm reached out to accost him.

"Your excellency?"

He turned to face the source: it was the pretty, intelligent and impertinent young reporter from _Il Messaggero_ , Signorina DiGuccione. He groaned inwardly, even while pasting on a polite smile at the totally awful timing of the chance encounter. The woman was showing remarkable consistency in her ability to meddle with his life.

The big brown eyes within the small oval face regarded him seriously. "It _is_ you, then! But why are you not inside for the high mass, Archbishop?" It was phrased as a question, but he sensed she knew the answer before asking, knew and perhaps regretted her part in it...as well she should, after publishing his private and confidential remarks.

"Why aren't you?" he retorted, but immediately felt shame for his petty attack when he saw the tears spring to her eyes.

"I, um...I'm really sorry about that article I wrote. I hope I didn't make too much trouble for you."

"Too much?" He countered. "And what would be just enough, when it comes to trouble?" He enjoyed watching her squirm for a moment, just as she'd made him squirm. Then he relented, shrugging eloquently with a wry smile to ease the tension between them. "It is of no import, signorina. You only printed what was true, in here," he thumped his chest. "I could not have disguised my feelings much longer in any case; so perhaps I do not belong in there after all." He gestured toward the huge building that overshadowed the mortals at its gates, noting as he turned towards it that the two Americans were no longer in view and all the guards appeared to be back in their assigned positions.

"As God wills," he prayed silently, turning his attention back to the small pretty woman.

"Well, if it's any consolation, that's why I'm outside too." She attempted a wan smile, but it never reached her watery eyes. "Someone called my editor, someone from the Vatican – highly placed, I gather – who didn't like the allusions I'd made to His Holiness's rather liberal record. I'm now on probation, assigned to the society pages." She made a face, tossing back her thick short mane of hair. "I'm restricted to reporting on charity teas, debutante balls, weddings and the like: Not much opportunity there to ply my investigative skills...nor to make trouble, I guess. Today I'm just here as one of the curious multitude."

"I'm sorry to hear that, truly," he said, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. He spoke with her another minute or two not wishing to seem in a hurry, partly because he didn't want to appear unfeeling, but more because he didn't want to arouse her suspicion by rushing away. With her native intuitive nosiness, she just might follow him to the two Americans, smelling a story with which she might redeem herself at the expense of whatever purpose the pair was sent to fulfill.

He was just leading their conversation towards a polite excuse to part company when the crowd in the square suddenly broke into a display of wild jubilation. Out of a glass door that opened onto a small balcony projecting from the enormous facade of the basilica, some 75 feet above the ground, two tiny figures had appeared. The first was clothed in the white vestments of the Papal office, the second man garbed in red robes: This Magliano recognized as the most senior Cardinal Deacon of Vatican City.

As the new Pope knelt before him, the red-gowned cardinal ceremoniously placed the three-tiered gold crown of papal office on Sixtus VI's close cropped head. A strategically placed microphone carried their voices clearly through a hundred amplifiers spaced along the upper edge of the double colonnade surrounding the huge piazza, making it seem as if the words came from everywhere at once as the cardinal solemnly pronounced the man: "Father of princes and kings, ruler of the world on earth and vicar of our savior Jesus Christ."

_For we wrestle...against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world..._ The American's words thundered back into Luigi's mind, sending chills down his back. He almost wept with the realization, but it would have gone unnoticed anyway; many in the crowd were crying openly by now.

Pope Sixtus stepped forward, raising his arms high above the golden crown that rested uneasily on his head, to accept the cheering acclamation pouring forth from the several hundred thousand faithful packing the square. The minutes passed, the crowd yelling itself hoarse, but still the new Pope held his arms high in triumph urging them on an on.

Magliano could see the cardinal deacon at last lean forward to whisper something in the Pontiff's ear. Sixtus shook his head imperceptibly and raised his arms still higher in a gesture reminiscent of Nixon or Juan Peron, milking the crowd for every last drop of adulation until the cheers finally began to die of their own exhaustion.

Only then did he give the traditional blessing: "Urbi et Orbi" _– to the city and to the world_ – to the throngs of worshippers and TV cameras focused in on his finely hewn features.

As if on cue, the cardinal deacon disappeared back into the inner recesses of the church, then reappeared a moment later pushing before him a wheelchair in which a tiny, shrunken whey-faced creature hunched over to one side. Saliva drooled from his slack grey lips, his withered hands bent into permanently twisted claws against the silken vestments of his holy office. But the bulging eyes set deep within the hollow sockets of the cadaverous face were bright and darkly alive, sparking with a knowing glee.

"My children," Pope Sixtus's rich cultured baritone rang out through the multitude of amplifiers, immediately stilling the wondering murmur of the crowd. "Most of you have by now heard rumors of the great miracles that have been manifest within this holy city of God over the past week. You have heard that our revered Pontiff, Pope Marcus, suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage and was given up for dead by his physicians, and how the hand of God brought him back to life, and through him issued wondrous proclamations, declaring Marcus to be our direct link with the Supreme Being, his voice now that of God Himself, his words God's direct message to the waiting world."

He waited for the roar of acclamation to rise and die away, then continued: "But we understand, even as Christ Jesus himself understood, that in the frailty of human faith it is sometimes necessary to provide even the most devout believers with some sort of visible proof, some act that defies the laws of the natural world as we mortals understand them, in order that all last lingering doubts be stilled and you will all – every last man – accept his Divine transcendence."

"No, no!" some protestations carried up from the people below: "We do believe!"

Sixtus raised an imperious hand to still their demurral. "You _wish_ to believe," he corrected them; "but you need evidence to bolster your faith. I give you now the proof you secretly seek; I give you a..." and with a dramatic flourish he stood aside, waving his arm toward the withered body in the wheelchair... "a miracle!"

Slowly the crippled, ruined figure of Pope Marcus began to rise, the withered arms – scarred with fresh red needle marks from the insertion of intravenous tubes – clutched spastically to his sunken chest. He rose gracefully, as if suspended by invisible wires, first pulled to an upright position and then – no, it couldn't be! – rising further still, floating up above the balcony itself! Gasps of wonder escaped the multitude as if from a single throat, then a hushed silence stilled the mighty crowd, every one of the three hundred thousand afraid to speak lest he or she be responsible for breaking the miraculous spell and sending their beloved Pontiff crashing to the pavement twenty-five meters below.

Transcending the laws of gravity, the Pope sailed silently and slowly over the crowd, his pale feet dangling bare and limp beneath his nearly vertical form. He moved along an invisible path to the very center of the enormous plaza then paused, hovering directly above the apex of the eighty-five foot high Egyptian obelisk, his limp shoeless feet just grazing the pointed tip of the red stone structure like a twisted ivory angel atop an enormous stone Christmas tree.

Then he spoke. There was no microphone to amplify his voice, and yet it boomed forth, echoing up from some unfathomable depth – a hole in space or a bottomless well – rasping and growling as his utterances were drawn out like an old vinyl record played at too slow a speed. It was awesome and horrible at the same time, resonating and rumbling as if magnified by a faulty PA system, even while it was obvious that there could be no electronic equipment to blame at that inaccessible spot.

"Children," the hollow voice reverberated; "hear me well. I am the voice of the Lord thy God, speaking through this empty vessel of Our servant, Pope Marcus the Third. Blessed are those of you present here today, and blessed are those to whom you take today's message. Your salvation is at hand."

Men and women were crying openly now. Many – most – had fallen to their knees, hands clasped in an attitude of prayer, lips moving soundlessly, eyes glued to the tiny frail figure far above their heads.

"As you trust in me, trust also in your new servant, to be henceforth known in title as Secondary Pope Sixtus the Sixth, for he has been chosen by Me to act on My behalf, to carry out My directives and achieve My great plan for the world!"

All of a sudden, in the midst of the awestruck silence, a voice screamed up from the crowd below, slashing the mood of reverence like a bloodied sword.

"Blasphemer! Blasphemer! You are not God's messenger, not the Chosen One, but Satan's pawn! You are not the source of light to this weary, half-blind world, but the glittery beguilement of the Prince of Darkness and its ultimate enslaver!"

It was Muldoon, shaking in fear and fury, standing just outside the colonnade directly across from the obelisk above which Marcus hovered. Joe stood at his right side, silently mouthing the words Muldoon spoke.

People looked around in an absolute horror of confusion, as if caught up in a waking nightmare. They were too stupefied to dredge up any emotion for or against the man shouting in their midst. But already a contingent of uniformed guards was angrily pushing its way through the crowds toward the reviler of their holy sovereign, the man they were sworn to protect. T _heir_ duty, at least, was clear.

" _He deceiveth them that dwell on earth by means of these miracles, which he has power to do in the sight of the beast!"_ The monsignor quoted loudly, over the growing rumble of the worshipers, his voice carrying clearly and with exquisite clarity up into the ears of Pope Marcus. Deep within the Pope's black black eyes a purple light began to emanate, focusing into a pair of needlelike beams.

"Behold, the jackals already bay at the Holy See, trying to dissuade and confound you with their nihilistic misinterpretation of The Word!" The Pontiff's unearthly voice thundered. The light in his eyes flashed suddenly brighter, more intense: "But God will strike them down as he struck down Sodom and Gomorrah!" he proclaimed, sending the lasers accelerating downward toward his American indicters like two blazing fingers of death.

They entered the space above the Americans' heads just as the Vatican gendarmerie were reaching for the culprits, but rather than destroy the pair the rays began to bend and diffuse around them as if striking an invisible barrier. Their white-hot heat surrounded the intended victims, forming a wall of electrical force between them and their would-be attackers, who fell back in pain and disarray, shielding their faces from the intense radiation.

Women were screaming, men shouting. The floating shell of Pope Marcus in which the first beast rode hesitated, as if taken by surprise at this turn of events.

At that moment a short, heavy arm reached through the shimmering aura that encompassed the two accusers and laid a hand on the shoulder of the taller man. To the mustachioed Italian there was no heat, no searing pain in the force field, it merely light and illusion.

"Come with me, come quickly," he whispered urgently to the tall dark preacher and his sad-eyed counterpart. They moved out of the circle of fire at his command, without pause or argument, their paths predetermined by the script being written moment to moment in their minds.

As the Pope withdrew the fire back into himself, the police looked around in confusion: Their targets had completely vanished. They began asking questions of the nearby witnesses, who were burling about like ants in a termite nest, but no one seemed to have any idea where the men had gone. Marcus, the ultimate strategist, father of politicians and used car salesman, instantly began to turn the disappearance of his antagonists to his favor.

"Behold! The hand of God has vanquished the deceivers!" he proclaimed in his terrible unearthly rumble. "Can there be any doubt remaining in your hearts that the true God is before you? You have witnessed the wondrous proof that it is HE who acts through me, for who else can create and uncreate anything of this universe, who else can bend, change or circumvent the very laws of nature but _He_ , because they were His laws to begin with!"

From deep within a dark, musty tunnel beneath the colonnade, following behind the dim, shaking beam of a tiny penlight held resolutely in the fingers of their new benefactor, Mike and Joe heard the crowd's sudden roar of approval, the swelling tidal wave of voices cheering on and on in near hysteria. The two men stopped and looked at one another in shared hopelessness and defeat.

Magliano halted as well, turning to these strange driven men who were now crying openly and bitterly at their failure. He shook his head at them.

"No, it is not over _amici usque ad aras_. It cannot be: You are the _Olive Trees_."

Surprisingly, embarrassingly, he dropped to his knees, bent forward into the darkness and kissed both of their feet, a gesture of ultimate homage and servitude, of shining humility.

"I am your servant, and I will do all I can to help you in your holy quest," he whispered hoarsely. "It is my honor and my privilege.

Chapter 26

Sunday June 18

Contra Costa County

By the time Paul Grogan had finished his inspection of the fire scene and returned to the park entrance to pick up his car it was after six: He was tired, pissed off and ravenous.

It wasn't until he'd driven all the way back up Highway 24 to Lafayette, at the intersection of 680, that he finally found what he was looking for: two big Macs, large fries, an apple turnover and a chocolate shake.

Now that need was taken carry of, he decided he might as well pay a visit to Mrs. Draekins over in Walnut Creek while he was in the area, to see if she might be able to shed some light on her daughter's whereabouts.

It was nearly 8 PM when he stood in the middle of her tidy house, his misshapen cap crumbled penitently in his large hands, peeking at the woman from beneath the overhang of bushy eyebrows while she busied herself making coffee. For once there was no cigar hanging from his lower lip, and without it his face looked oddly empty, exposed and vulnerable.

He couldn't have told you why he was acting so out of character. His submissive, respectful manner had nothing to do with being in a nice home – he'd been in much finer ones than this plenty of times, the urge to commit murder not limited to the poor by any means. And this was no more than your average, well-kept middle class suburban home – a rambling wood-shingled ranch style from the mid 80's, with unlit tiki lamps around the obligatory kidney shaped pool, huge-leafed philodendrons hugging the flagstone patio, palm trees paired in tactfully landscaped oases here and there within the slightly patchy lawn.

The house was furnished in oak and maple period pieces – overstuffed sofas and chairs in muted floral patterns that looked warm, comfortable and inviting, and as unused as if they were on perpetual display in a showroom window.

An ornate black forest cuckoo clock in the entry hall - the only object in the house not rigidly American colonial - began squawking out the hour in questionably musical chirps. A second door in the clock face opened and out twirled a tiny painted couple dancing woodenly to a Strauss waltz.

The attractive woman standing at the kitchen island turned to smile at him a bit too brightly, her eyes glittery with grief.

"Silly little nuisance," she commented, and he couldn't be sure whether she was referring to the clock, to him, or to the pain of her missing daughter.

She graciously insisted he sit in one of the overstuffed chairs, setting two delicate china cups of steaming black coffee carefully down on the maple coffee table between them before taking a seat herself on the sofa across. She then stared at them confusedly for a moment, as if trying to remember what she was supposed to do next.

"Oh, of course," Dolores answered herself aloud. "Cream? Sugar?"

"Uh, no ma'am, this'll be just fine for me."

It was _her,_ he realized with a start as his heart did a little jump inside his chest.

That was what was making him as twitchy as a schoolboy on a first date. She was a good-looking broad, with an indefinable aura of covert sexuality beneath her refined exterior – and Christ, what a nice ass for an older lady! He wondered if she could be had, and the thought frightened him. It had been years since he'd sought comfort in anything other than his own good right hand.

As he sat down opposite her a tiny smile softened her features momentarily, as if she sensed what he was thinking and appreciated the sentiment. She pulled and straightened the pink knit cashmere dress to cover her knees more modestly, but all the act succeeded in doing was to draw attention to her nylon smooth legs. Paul took a big swallow of the hot coffee to hide his nervousness, thinking that whoever started the trend toward putting women in slacks was either a fag or a commie.

"What would you like to know, Mr..." She searched her memory for the name he'd given her over the phone. Damn! How could she forget it already? She prided herself on always remembering a name. Dolores shook her head apologetically.

"Grogan, ma'am," the beefy lieutenant supplied helpfully: "Detective Paul Grogan, SFPD."

"Yes, of course. I am _so_ sorry, I just can't seem to think straight since, since..." there was a catch in her voice.

"It's perfectly understandable Mrs. Draekins."

"Dolores."

"Dolores. I know this is hard for you, but I, uh, I'm trying to piece together what might have happened that night leading up to your daughter's mysterious disappearance. As I told you already, I'm pretty sure she and her companions survived the fire, but there's evidence she may have been seriously injured, so we do need to find her as soon as possible. I'm also hoping you can shed a little light on the incident she and the two gentlemen were involved in a few days prior, when two people were killed: From what I've gathered so far, it appears they were in the middle of some kind of ...religious ritual?"

He chose his words carefully, not wishing to offend her by calling it devil worship, but the middle-aged matron had no such compunction.

"Demonology!" she spat angrily. "Crazy weird crap, that's what they were into! They thought my Marija was being possessed by Satan, that's what they told me that night when they came over. But when the priest couldn't get an exorcism approved by the church they decided to try a séance instead, can you imagine!"

She stopped, clearing her throat brusquely and swallowing hard. She wouldn't cry, she wouldn't! It would make her mascara run, her face sag and eyes get all puffy. She looked so old and ugly now when she cried, not like in her youth when a show of tears was her most effective weapon. She took a sip of her coffee, trying to wash the emotions back down into her chest.

"I tried to suggest that she should see a psychiatrist, but she wouldn't hear of it. She and that husband of hers took off in a huff...said they were going for a drive. 'Fresh air' they said. That's the last time I saw either one of them, the last time I saw my daughter alive..."

That did it: The last word came out in a gush of tears. Abruptly the woman jumped up, mumbling apologies, and rushed from the room. Grogan could hear water running in the bathroom down the hall, muffled sobs, the stern inhaling of breath while the woman fought to regain control. He felt a certain admiration for the old gal, trying to be so brave, so strong in the face of her obvious heartbreak.

_Class_ _, that's what she has. They don't make them like that anymore_ , he thought hungrily.

Within her mirrored bathroom, the woman was peering myopically into the gilded vanity. Having successfully staved off the flow of tears, she was now carefully reapplying the mascara, hoping her fifty-two year old eyes wouldn't puff up too noticeably.

"Damn that girl anyway, how could she _do_ this to me?" she muttered uncharitably, pulling on a lower lid so that her powdered eye shadow would go on more smoothly.

She shook the unkind thought from her head with a vague toss of her platinum hair, pressing a pair of manicured fingertips against the throbbing little pain that had just begun to develop in her right temple.

By the time Dolores Draekins had finished repairing her make-up and returned to the living room, the burly detective was standing as if to leave.

"Perhaps this is too much of a strain on you right now, Mrs. Draekins," he began regretfully.

"No, no...do sit down lieutenant. It's quite all right, really," she assured him. "I don't mind answering your questions: It helps a bit to talk about it, actually. May I get you another cup of coffee?"

"Well, sure...if it's not too much trouble."

"It's not" she replied, picking up his empty cup and her own half-full cold one. "Oh, lieutenant, are you still officially on duty?"

"Uh, not exactly, ma'am. I'm supposed to be off on Sundays, but I've been putting in some of my own time on this case."

"Then could I persuade you to join me in a little cognac? I feel I could use a drop myself, but I do hate to drink alone...You know what they say."

Grogan readily consented: Nothing he loved better than a shot of good brandy with his coffee. He watched her ass again as she left the room, admiring the tight little way she controlled its natural swing. Even more, he admired the way she returned with an entire fifth of Hennesey's Very Special and a pair of crystal brandy snifters on a silver tray.

The cognac seemed to travel almost instantly to the speech centers of the woman's brain, short-circuiting the locks and lubricating the gears on her jaws. Soon she was rambling on about her daughter in far greater detail than the detective asked for, needed or particularly wanted to hear. Nevertheless he listened with intense politeness, especially as his talkative hostess kept generously refilling his glass while giving him an abbreviated life history of Marija's odd behavior.

The picture that began to evolve was that of an emotionally susceptible and gullible young woman – from her mother's viewpoint – who had begun to fall apart shortly after entering a relationship with this character Joe and the quasi-priest Muldoon. She opined that the two must have orchestrated the mental takeover of her daughter, though to what purpose, Dolores admitted, she couldn't imagine. Neither, Grogran agreed, could he.

But the final conclusion, to Dolores at least, was that Marija had been the innocent dupe of these two fanatical cultists, and may well have been beaten and kidnapped by them when she refused to go along with their Satanic practices any longer.

"I _know_ my daughter, Paul," Dolores said, nodding her perfectly coifed head and grabbing his arm for emphasis, leaning in closer until her musky perfume was competing with the aromatic cognac for first place on his palate. "She's a good girl. Maybe a bit, how do you say... _flaky_? But basically she's decent and intelligent. She must have been brainwashed into believing all that crazy stuff about Satan trying to possess her...Yes, I'm sure that's it: Those two _brainwashed her_ into going along with their plans. And then I must have somehow broken through that brainwashing!" The woman was getting quite excited now by the alcoholic clarity of her thoughts: "That night when I pointed out that it was all in her mind, I must have – what is it they call it? – _deprogrammed_ her. That's it, I deprogrammed her!"

She clutched his arm so hard he could feel her bright red fingernails pressing into his flesh through the heavy material of his jacket, a not unpleasant sensation.

"That's when she turned on them, probably threatening to go to the authorities when she realized what they'd done. Oh my God!" she cried: "I just realized that in a way, in a strange terrible way, it's _my_ fault that she's missing, hurt, maybe even murdered!"

Dolores threw herself dramatically into Paul Grogan's arms, sobbing loudly in despair.

The detective's drink slopped out over his hand and dripped onto the brown carpet: He gingerly set the glass on the table dragging his fingers across the carpet to remove the last traces of cognac before awkwardly wrapping his arms around the woman's heaving back, muttering words of comfort as he squeezed the woman's firm shoulders, imagining they were breasts.

Jesus, was she soft! A picture flashed unbidden across his mind; that softness all naked and unfettered lying vulnerable and passive beneath him while he plunged his hardness into her over and over.He shuddered. _You puke, you asshole,_ he chastised himself, gritting his teeth against the incipient erection: _Here's this poor lady, her heart breaking, and all you can offer is to rape her in your mind._

But the fifty-two year old matron in his arms took her time letting go of his comfortable bulk, even after the last of her sobs had subsided, and when she did at last pull away, her mascara was remarkably intact.

Later that night, much later as it turned out, Dolores Draekins and Paul Grogan ended up falling asleep in each other's naked arms...both happily surprised.

Chapter 27

Sunday June 18th

Vatican City

It was late afternoon when Joe Marten answered the coded rap on their door, opening it to admit the portly unassuming man who carried a greasy paper bag in each hand.

"Hi Archbishop," he nodded, taking one of the bags and shaking the soft damp palm that had clutched it with genuine affection.

"I brought you a little supper, signori," the Italian said, inclining his head politely.

Mike came across the bare cement floor of the tiny kitchen where he'd been tinkering with the ancient plumbing, wiping the grease from his long fingers with a soiled rag

"Welcome, your Excellency," he said with a warm smile that momentarily chased away the dark fatigue and hopelessness in his bloodshot eyes. "Please come in, be seated." He steered the shorter man toward a shabby sofa, his arm around the Italian's shoulders. "We must talk."

"Yes, certainly, thank you," Magliano said. "But first, eat," he insisted, shoving the second bag of food into the African American's hands. "I am sure you must be...how do they say in America...'starved'? Eat, the talking will wait that long."

"Smells great," Joe commented, coming around the other side of the couch to plop himself into a threadbare upholstered chair, his nose already deep into the brown recesses of the paper bag.

Mike sat too, proffering the bag in a gesture of invitation to the Italian, who shook his head firmly. "No, no please, go ahead: I have already eaten my fill, thank you."

Magliano, to avoid the impoliteness of watching them eat, began looking about more carefully at their surroundings: the filthy kitchen alcove, the tiny bath with its cracked and stained porcelain fixtures, the seepage through a mildew-stained wall beneath the dirt-streaked transom.

"Dear me, it is so, so... _shabby_!" he blurted aloud, wringing his hands.

He knew the abandoned apartment, located in the basement of one of the older complexes that flanked the rear of the Vatican gardens, was a perfect hiding place for the two uninvited visitors. Its brush-enshrouded entrance at the bottom of a leaf-strewn cement stairwell was almost invisible to the infrequent passerby. With a little caution one could come and go at almost any hour without being spotted.

Magliano, who'd become aware of several such abandoned apartments in the Vatican during his meditative walks through the vast grounds, had led the fugitives to this one after their narrow escape from the gendarmerie earlier that day, never imagining anything in the otherwise ornate, well-maintained city could be in such sad shape. He sighed loudly, looking around again.

"If we'd wanted thick carpets and color TV, we could have stayed home," Joe smiled kindly as he licked the last crumbs of sweet Italian pastry from his fingertips.

"Yes, please don't give it another thought," Michael added. "You've already done far more than we could have hoped for."

Luigi Magliano blushed, shaking his head.

"So," Muldoon turned without preamble to the topic that was on all their minds: "Have you had time to consider all that we told you we believe regarding Popes Marcus and Sixtus?"

"Yes" the Archbishop answered very quietly, studying the worn asphalt tile.

"And will you help us pull the plugs?" Joe blurted, lacking the priest's finesse or patience.

Startled by the abruptness of the question, Magliano looked up, held the man's eyes for a moment, then whispered: "Yes."

"You will?" Joe responded, honestly surprised.

"Thank God," breathed Muldoon.

"I, I still pray it is the right thing. To take a life, any life..."

"But we _aren't_ , not really," Michael argued gently. "We're just turning off the manmade mechanical inventions that have prevented God from taking the man at his rightful time. It was Satan, not God, who ordered he be kept alive on machines in order to do his bidding."

"I know. It is what I thought about, prayed about, all afternoon; that is why I have decided to help you end it."

"So!" said Joe.

"So...?" Mike echoed.

"So, what do you want me to do?" asked the Archbishop, his palms upraised and his expression so quaintly comical that this time the smile did reach the American priest's eyes.

Chapter 28

Sunday June 18th

Vatican City

The sun had set, the twilight snaking purple and gold fingers through the sky above the Vatican palace before relinquishing day's hold to the velvet canopy of night when Archbishop Magliano turned at last from his third story window with a sigh.

Locking the door of the small tidy bedroom behind him, he assumed a look of mild indifference as he forced his gait to remain a casual stroll down the long, carpeted hall of the east wing apartments, heading toward the business end of the palace.

Nodding, smiling, passing the time of day when necessary with the few ecclesiastics and other palace personnel he happened to encounter, the Archbishop made his way slowly down two flights and through a short maze of hallways to the suite of rooms that constituted the Vatican infirmary.

Guards were posted outside the wide double doors that led to the hospital waiting room, a hospital now devoid of all patients save one. Magliano recognized the two men, and clutched at his memory for their names as he paused to exchange pleasantries with the bored and foot-weary pair.

"Ah, Pietro," he smiled broadly, reaching out to take the first man's hand firmly in his own; "how is it with you? And with you," he turned to include the other costumed sentinel with a friendly clasp to the shoulder. "Lorenzo, isn't it?"

"Why yes, Your Excellency," the younger guard smiled, flushed with pleasure at being recognized by this well know nuncio.

"And how is your young bride, Lorenzo? Anxious to have you home to supper, I would guess."

"I, I suppose so sir...that is, Your Excellency; but I'll be off at nine, so that's not too long now."

"You too, Pietro. Will you finally get to rest your tired feet?" he smiled gently.

Such social niceties were so natural to the Archbishop's normal demeanor that neither guard had the slightest inkling they were being questioned for a purpose. Even Luigi's underlying nervousness did not surface sufficiently to compromise his habitual friendliness.

"Yes, Excellency," Pietro grinned, shifting to the other foot; "and glad of it too: my bunions are killing me."

"It must be a tiresome duty," Luigi commiserated, looking from one to the other sympathetically; "what with no public or other patients allowed back in this area now to keep you busy. Do they even post guards all night?"

"No, we're the last watch until morning. We're only here to catch the occasional stray tourist..."

"Or reporter," Pietro interjected.

"...who slips by the sentry at the entrance to this wing. Actually only _he_ is needed here for that;" the younger man grinned, with a nod towards his counterpart. "I'm just here to keep him from falling asleep."

"But once the public entrances are locked for the night and all visitors have been ejected, there's no need for us," Pietro concluded.

"And how is everything within?" Luigi asked, indicating the infirmary area with a concerned expression. "Are the doctors still running in and out at all hours, or has it settled down to some kind of routine now?"

"Ah now, Excellency," the first guard ventured, "of course they tell us nothing of Il Papa's condition, but we do have eyes and ears. It appears the machines within whirr on without trouble, doing their jobs as it were, and nothing much changes for the better or worse." He shook his head sadly, the younger blond guard following suit. "The doctor visits four or five times a day now, checking the machines and charts – as a matter of fact he's in there for his last visit of the day right now – and of course there are two nursing nuns on duty round the clock, but that is all. So, after this morning's miracle, Il Papa returned to his deathlike state, and nothing about his circumstance has changed or seems likely to unless of course God wills it again."

"Hmm," said the Archbishop; "a sad state of affairs, yes? A sad sad state. Well, all we can do is pray my dear brothers."

Just then he heard noises within the infirmary, a man's voice giving curt instructions, a soft woman's murmur of compliance. Magliano checked his watch.

"Well now, how the time flies! Here is it ten to nine already, and soon you will be flying home as well."

Luigi wanted to get out of there, to leave before the doctor saw him so that later, when the deed was done, he wouldn't make the connection. But the priesthood was too strong in him.

"Kneel then, if you will my children, and I will pronounce a blessing on you to see you safely home."

"Grazi, Your Excellency," the pair assented, kneeling and bowing their heads while the gentle holy man made the sign of the cross on their foreheads.

The doctor exited upon the scene, but averted his gaze and hurried quietly away so as not to interrupt the sanctity of the moment.

Only one pair of eyes, hidden in the recesses of a dark side hall some fifty feet away, continued to watch Magliano with great interest, as he had for the past fifteen minutes since unexpectedly coming upon him in this place.

The owner of those eyes skulked further back into the shadows as the Archbishop shuffled past him and on down the dimly lit hall, exiting out a side door that wheezed shut and locked behind him with a small click. Then the figure emerged from his cover and began to follow.

Outside the night was dark, a thin ground mist rising to blot out the meager twinkling of the first handful of stars to be thrown against the black palette of sky. The stranger could barely make out the rounded form of the Archbishop as he slipped quietly down the broad alleyway between buildings and headed toward the unlit secretive expanses of the Vatican Gardens.

He hurried his pace, afraid to lose the man in the dark amidst the twisting hedges and shrubbery. Finally he saw his quarry a hundred meters ahead turning onto an unpaved path alongside one of the older apartment buildings, near the rear of the walled city. Slipping carefully alongside the overgrown bushes that nearly covered the walkway, the Archbishop suddenly turned into the building and disappeared. The crisp night air carried the sound of quiet rapping, then of a door squeaking open on ancient hinges and a voice saying: "Come in, my friend."

A distinctly American voice!

Magliano was harboring the Americans who'd made such a scene at this morning's coronation! Half the Vatican gendarmerie were looking for them throughout Rome, and here they were right under everyone's noses!

Cardinal Bishop Paolo Bertini shook his head in stunned disbelief, then carefully, quietly slipped away and hurried back to the palace.

The thin intense man lay open-eyed on his bed in the austere little guest suite. He couldn't have slept that night if he'd been overdosed with morphine.

The Americans, damn them! Because of them all his old doubts and fears had returned, what he'd heard them accuse Pope Marcus of this morning after the ceremonial high mass echoing and re-echoing through his mind and conscience like a broken record.

It was _their_ fault he'd found himself restlessly wandering the halls this evening, his feet drawing him subconsciously toward the infirmary where the source of his quandary lay; their fault he'd discovered Magliano in the middle of questioning the guards and had found himself hiding away like some kind of spy to eavesdrop.

But questioning it was, however innocently posed: He'd immediately known the Archbishop was up to something even if the guards had not. Because _he_ knew that Magliano had openly opposed the election of Sixtus, and had gotten himself ostracized because of it; and knowing the man, he doubted that opinion had changed much. And, perhaps, because he himself also still harbored serious if unspoken doubts about the situation, unable to shake the feeling that something was wrong, deeply terribly wrong.

Even after praying long and fervently, praying until his bony knees had ached and swelled from the hours spent pressed into the hard floor of his little apartment in Vatican Palace, still the edgy dis-ease would not leave him, the rat of nervousness that had gnawed at his insides ever since his first summons to the Pope's bedside would not sleep.

The gray wizened remains of Marcus had looked out at Bertini and his colleagues with those too-bright eyes and unapologetically declared himself the voice of God.

Only...only Bertini hadn't felt the _touch_ of God in that awful voice, nor did he feel it in that of his successor to the throne of Saint Peter, Pope Sixtus the sixth. He'd felt instead only a dark chill of dread.

So, what was he to do about Magliano and the Americans? He didn't even know what to do about himself.

Chapter 29

Monday, June 19th

The Vatican

Archbishop Magliano slipped behind the hedges and down the crumbling cement steps at precisely 8PM. The door opened even before he knocked, admitting him to the squalid little apartment.

In one hand he carried a large plastic bag which bulged softly, in the other a pair of grease-stained paper lunch bags similar to those he'd brought the night before.

He was perspiring heavily, even though it was not a particularly warm evening, and his sweat had an acrid smell which embarrassed him.

Not much was said as the men ate: It had all been discussed in detail the night before, when the Archbishop had returned from the infirmary. There was nothing left but to do it, and the three preferred to face this idea alone.

While the Americans finished their supper, the Archbishop withdrew the garments he'd brought from the large plastic bag and lay them carefully over the back of the decrepit sofa, gently smoothing out their few wrinkles with his hands. There were two long, cream-colored hooded robes made of a heavy wool which, he knew, were liable to feel oppressive in the mild Roman summer evening; but that couldn't be helped. Brown braided waist cords and black-beaded rosaries completed the effect.

When the men were finished eating he helped them into their disguises, then stood back to appraise each carefully.

"Well?" Joe said, attempting a model's turn and pose. "Will I make it as a monk?"

The Italian smiled despite his tension. "You'll pass," he said; "but _you_..." he tweaked his large mustache insultingly at the other man.

"I know, it's hard to make a convincing ascetic out of a gangstah," Muldoon grinned

"Well, it's true that few of your color have chosen the monastic life..."

"Probably second thoughts about the vows of chastity," Joe gibed, then fell quickly silent, embarrassed by his own lack of propriety, considering they were priests.

"...but actually it was the tennis shoes I was referring to."

Mike looked down at his feet. The robe had obviously been intended for a man several inches shorter than he was: His size twelve Reeboks hung out all the way to the tops of his red-striped socks.

"Ergh" he grumbled, shaking his head.

"Ah well, too late now. Let's just hope no one notices you're not in sandals," the Archbishop shrugged, checking his watch. "So, are we ready?"

The trio proceeded in silence across the gardens and through the poorly lit alleys of the huge complex, the "monks" with heads bowed and faces lost in deep shadow beneath the overhang of the broad peaked cowls.

At the rear of the palace's easternmost apartment wing the Americans waited nervously for Magliano to fumble his personal key into a locked door, then followed him quickly inside.

"What now?" Joe whispered, the first words he'd uttered since leaving the safety of their refuge.

"It is only five to nine," Luigi answered softly. "We don't want to arrive at the infirmary before five or ten after to be certain we don't run into the guards. I suggest we take a slow stroll the long way around."

"And remember," Mike admonished his friend; "there is no need to speak even when spoken to. Many monks take a vow of silence, so such behavior wouldn't be considered unusual. Let Luigi do all the talking if any explanation becomes necessary."

On the second floor of the Vatican palace, in an enormous and magnificently decorated apartment, a small party of diners were just completing their sumptuous main course at the same moment the trio of would-be assassins were entering the opposite side of the building.

At the head of the enormous oval table presided the newly elected pontiff in a throne-like chair. On his right sat Cardinal Secretary Mendice, his tiny hands folded together on the place where his plate had been. To the left of Sixtus was Patriarch Synarus, carefully brushing crumbs from his long straight beard with a clean linen napkin. On either side of these men and across from each other sat Dean Falliano and Camerlingo Bertini, the first – thought Sixtus – a proud and decisive lion, albeit with claws that were slowly losing their sharpness; the second a shrewd if nervous little fox, someone to be watched. _Keep your enemies closer_ , he mused.

The rest of the company hardly counted, a quartet of palsied and liver-spotted old fools who were as incapable of contributing anything substantial to his plan as they were of opposing it.

_My home guard,_ he thought, smiling ruefully: _the mighty phalanx with which I am to conquer the world_. _Oh well, these may be largely cringing old dogs and nearly useless, but at least they will cause no problems, no red flags raised or trumpets sounded. They'll go along with whatever I and Marcus say just so long as it doesn't threaten their own security. Every one of them is too firmly entrenched in Catholic dogma to even consider questioning the infallibility of the Pope: that would be tantamount to questioning everything they've ever believed in._

The other four Cardinals, however, were still powerful and vital men, capable of wielding tremendous influence in this world he soon would control. They could have been dangerous, had not the Master delivered them into his hands. Too bad they were aiding this cause out of blind faith and ignorance, rather than a true commitment to the _real_ ruler of this earth, the one he served. That would have been sweet.

Anyway that was _their_ problem. In the end they would realize their mistake no doubt, and end up with no side at all: Neither would have them. Barred from the presence of God for their betrayal, they would also be denied the pleasures of mammon by their own confused consciences – a limbo which would only serve them right for being lukewarm.

None of this internal conversation showed on the new Pope's tanned, impassive face. There was nothing but the little smile, which could have been interpreted as warmth or friendliness if one didn't look too closely into the cold gray flint of his eyes.

He signaled his personal steward to bring dessert and an after dinner wine.

As they'd hoped, an eminent member of the Vatican staff escorting a pair of cloaked and silent religious brothers attracted no undue attention during their trek through the labyrinthine passages of the Vatican, and the trio arrived at the entrance to the hospital infirmary without incident.

The time was 9:15: The last guards had gone home to supper and the door to the hospital suite lay unattended, no sound heard within. Magliano tried the knob, but it was locked. Not surprised, he rapped loudly on the door.

After a minute there was the sound of soft footsteps, then the door cracked open just far enough for a white-robed nun to peer through.

"Sister Mary Margarita?" the Archbishop inquired gently. "It is I, Archbishop Magliano. May I speak with you a moment?

The nun's face went through a subtle series of colorations. She had orders to admit no one, he was sure, but at the same time she had taken vows to respect the authority of one such as himself...not to mention the fact that they were personal friends. After a moment she wordlessly opened the door, yet when she spotted the hooded figures behind him she hesitated again, her look now one of outright dismay.

"Please have no fear," he said gently; "these are friends and brothers in Christ, Benedictine monks from Wales who have traveled a long pilgrimage to pay homage to our Pope. Mayn't we have just a moment of your time?"

A younger nun had now appeared, peeking curiously out from the swinging doors which led from the waiting room into a large examination area and nurse's station.

"Good evening, Sister Teresa," smiled the Italian Archbishop, stepping forward with a gallant little bow. The monks moved in close behind him, twin shadows.

The bespectacled nun returned the smile warmly, her face aglow. "What's the harm?" she said to the other sister, who shrugged and let them pass.

As the door closed and latched behind them, the two hooded men simultaneously let out their breath: They were in, it was as good as done.

While the Archbishop was explaining the purpose of their visit the Americans, wanting to look about but not daring to, forced their eyes to inspect the patterns on the marble floor at their feet.

"But they have come all the way from Scotland..."

"I thought you said Wales?"

"Yes, yes, Wales...I meant Wales. Dear me, I must be getting old. Anyway, they have come all this way to offer a special prayer and benediction for the Holy Father's recovery. Surely you can make an exception in this case?"

"Well, Excellency," the elder nurse responded; "I myself can see no harm in it, but Doctor Frederico left orders that no visitors were to be admitted without the express written consent of the Pope himself."

"But surely that is silliness...a misunderstanding," he corrected. "Il Papa cannot even speak, let alone write!"

"Not Pope _Marcus_ ," the nun exclaimed; "the other."

"Ah yes, of course...Sixtus."

"Perhaps I could call his suite, see if his personal steward could convey your request?" the woman suggested helpfully.

"I suppose...yes, all right, if there is nothing else we can do."

It was their prearranged signal.

Mike began to edge quietly toward the younger nun while Luigi, hands thrust deep in his pockets, followed closely behind the elder as she approached the swinging doors that led to the switchboard at the nurses station.

Suddenly both men acted: Each clasped a gauze-filled hand over the nose and mouth of his respective captive, his other hand clamped tightly around the sister's waist and arms. Each pulled the struggling woman in their arms into the other room and held her down until her flailings ceased. Then the men rose, looking shaken.

"Keep an eye on them," hissed Mike to Joe: "And give them a little more ether if they start to come to."

He turned abruptly and followed the Archbishop, who was now weeping quietly, down the broad hallway that led to the hospital room where the comatose pontiff lay helpless to stop them.

The wine glasses had been refilled, the dessert plates cleared, and at his signal a large cardboard portfolio placed on the table beside Pope Sixtus.

"I have here," he told his guests, his large hand fiddling with the soft edge of the folio; "preliminary sketches by the renowned Italian artist and sculptor Artelio Rowena which depict the miraculous flight of Pope Marcus on the day of my coronation. I have commissioned him to make a great statue in front of the basilica to commemorate the event."

A spontaneous murmur went up from the group, eight senior statesmen of the church all shuffling at once in their chairs, exclaiming to themselves at this unexpected news.

Pope Sixtus chuckled. "I see you are taken by surprise, but agreeably I hope... Or was the occasion not sufficiently miraculous to warrant some form of lasting memorial?"

The cool challenge beneath the gentle phrasing, the congenial tone, was not lost on Bertini.

"I have already selected one of the several choices the artist presented," he continued with his shark-like smile; so I will not take up your time with the rejects. This," he said as he pulled a large sheet of art bond out of the folder with a little flourish; "will soon become a new symbol of hope and faith for our Church worldwide."

" _Aaahhh_." The sound, a sigh of admiration and wonder, escaped the old dry lips as one long exhalation, a whisper of fall wind slithering through a pile of withered brown leaves. Every one of them leaned forward to peer more closely at the design. It was a watercolor of the red granite obelisk that stood in the center of the piazza. Atop it was the artist's impression of Pope Marcus, his pale unshod feet pressed against the apex of the pyramid, like a diver just leaving a springboard. The long white cassock and loose-fitting surplice flowed out behind his body like unfolding wings, while a golden aura surrounded the Pontiff's head in a multi-layered halo. Rowena had kindly omitted the slack-lipped drool, filled in the gray cadaverous cheeks with a glowing radiance and unbent the spastic tetany of his arms so that they reached upward towards heaven.

Engraved in a gold banner spiraling the base of the obelisk were the words: _"Il Papa Sera Il Niño_."

As he read this inscription Cardinal Paolo Bertini felt an icy chill begin to slowly climb up his spinal column. Pope Sixtus VI, with his new-found papal infallibility, had chosen a "new symbol of faith" for their religion which, in essence, declared Pope Marcus the Second Coming of Christ!

" _Il Papa Sera Il Niño"..._ The Father is become the Son, or in this case, The Pope – _Il Papa_ \- is become The Son of God... the _Christ!_

The icy chill suddenly penetrated his heart like a sword.

The tall black man in the too-short monk's robe and the squat Italian in his perspiration stained brown suit burst as one through the glass-paned door into the hospital room, and stopped short.

Across the sterile white cube, on a metal hospital bed, lay a gaunt, wizened figure that looked more mummy than man.

His shrunken flesh was taut and gray, and what little hair still clung to his mottled scalp was long and pure white, fading to invisibility against the bed linens. The eye sockets were deep pits of purplish blue within which two wrinkled slits lay embedded.

For a moment they thought he was already dead, that this whole thing was an enormous hoax. Then they saw the tubes and wires that crept from beneath the sheets to a bank of machines near the bed. They heard the rhythmic whir of a pump, the quieter hum of other monitoring devices; saw the series of slow blips that popped and dipped with electronic regularity across a flowing green screen, proof that life of a sort was proceeding.

The six tiny wires taped to Marcus's skull were connected to a machine which had recorded, for the most part, an unwavering series of straight lines since the day following his massive cerebral hemorrhage.

"Okay," whispered Mike; "Let's get this over with."

Neither man noticed the sudden ominous jiggle of the needle on the EEG printout.

As they moved closer to the foot of the bed, the eyes of Pope Marcus unexpectedly popped open – deep, dark eyes with a stygian fire still burning in them.

"Stop!" his unearthly voice rumbled from behind the cracked pale blue lips.

The command jolted them to a halt. Sweat sprang to their icy foreheads.

"You cannot do this," the voice charged with an eerie, echoic growl. "You must not interfere with God's will. Are you not so sworn?"

Michael found his voice first, but it proved unconvincingly weak. "You are _not_ God, you're Satan. You are the...the _deceiver_!"

Pope Marcus, or whoever spoke through him, laughed – a terrible sound full of pain and hate and malignancy.

"You _are_ Satan," Magliano cried, his voice a smear of anguish and uncertainty.

"Of course," Marcus smiled, his slack lips parting hideously to allow a string of drool to escape. "But that fact doesn't make it any less God's will."

"What?" Mike began, but a cold horror was beginning to dawn on him.

"Oh come now, Muldoon," the voice spat. "You who are forever throwing lines of prophecy at me like a chimp throwing shit...who do you claim _wrote_ that book you're quoting from?"

"But..."

" _Who_ , Muldoon?" Marcus shrieked, his cadaverous head rising a few inches off the pillow. "Surely you don't refer to that black book you're always carrying around as "The Word of Satan?"

"No."

"What, then? The word of _what,_ Muldoon?"

"God." It was a forlorn whisper, lost.

Magliano's face was already buried in his hands, his body shaken with racking sobs.

"What was that, priest?" the voice asked with a slithering sweetness. "I didn't hear you."

"God! It's the Word of God!" Michael cried.

"You get an "A", choirboy," Marcus laughed, his head collapsing back on the pillows, his eyes dark and sparking inside the pits of dying flesh. "And if the Word of God says that this is what is supposed to happen, as part of _His_ grand design, then who in hell – and I emphasize _in Hell_ ," he snickered – "are _you_ to try to stop it?!"

Muldoon bowed his head knowing that the demon was right. In the final test of faith, it appeared, there was no clear line between good and evil; they were merely opposite faces of the same coin, a coin that spun endlessly on its edge until it was a blur, the two faces merging into one.

He put his hand on the weeping Italian Archbishop's shoulder. "Let's go, my friend," he said.

Within a minute or two of playing guard over the unconscious nuns, Joe Marten's gnawing impatience had grown into anger. He'd flown over 7000 miles to avenge Marija's rape, to free her once and for all from the beast that had repeatedly tormented and terrified her, and instead he was watching a pair of oversized penguins snore!

So he gave them a couple more whiffs of the ether-soaked cloth, then hurried down the hospital corridor in search of his co-conspirators, arriving just in time to hear the demon's last argument, to see his friends – overwhelmed and confused by their own faith – give in to the deceit and start to withdraw.

And the anger inside him exploded into a wild, white hot burning fury.

He had no tenets of organized religion to unsettle him: All he had was a huge ache of love for a certain woman, and an all-too-clear memory of what the monster that now resided within the lifeless shrunken zombie of Pope Marcus had done to her.

Joe still understood basic right from wrong, in all its grand simplicity.

"Fuck this shit!"

He leapt across the room with an animal roar of rage, pushing the two priests out of his way.

Marcus's eyes, suddenly wide with alarm, caught his in their unearthly power, holding him in mid air for an endless moment outside of time. Then Joe wrenched his gaze slowly away, turning towards the machines, the life-giving machines.

"No!!!" Marcus screamed as the lithe, muscular man propelled himself into the carefully stacked electronic devices.

The components flew in every direction, landing in an explosion of sparks on the white tile floor; Joe fell on top of them. One sharp corner of a monitor caught his ribcage with a solid cracking sound; while another screen disintegrated nearby, sending slivers of glass into his face. He reached behind him with a groan and, grabbing a handful of rubber-sheathed wires, yanked the entire multitude of terminals from the wall socket.

The tall, militarily groomed Pontiff rose from his seat, raising his glass of wine ceremoniously in the air. The eight other men in the room, glancing at each other, rose in suit, holding their own glasses up. The light from the chandelier glinted off the crystal, making them look like candles in a processional.

"I would like to propose a toast" Sixtus began; "to the new symbol of faith for our world, to Pope Marcus, _Il Papa Sera..."_

He dropped the glass, its shattered crystal flying outward it a dreamy musical scream when it hit the edge of the table, as Pope Sixtus grabbed the sides of his head in sudden agony.

The pitifully shrunken waste of Pope Marcus heaved itself up from the bed in a final frantic effort to survive. Writhing half suspended in the air, he went through a series of convulsions, gasping and clawing at his throat with skeletal yellow fingers, a string of indecipherable blasphemies erupting from his mouth with each new spasm in a guttural roar that shook the room.

The trio of assassins looked on with a strange passivity.

As the seizures subsided, the deeply sunken eyes began to bulge outward, expanding and expanding, looking first surprised, then amazed, astounded. Changing color as they grew, from deepest black to brown to swollen dark red, they became finally large froglike eyeballs, crimson balloons with an expression that was simultaneously stupid and evil. All at once they burst, spraying twin gushers of unholy blood across the pristine whiteness of the sheets, the walls, the tile floors; and spattering the faces of the men who watched.

Yet not one of them so much as blinked.

The pope's blue slash of mouth opened wide in the final agony of death, but instead of a scream or a rale, there came a furious wind, a huge black rushing of air that stole all warmth and light from the room, plunging it into the depths of outer space; a vile-smelling evil wind that raged in lunatic laughter around the three stonelike assassins until at last, whirling and shrieking, it hurled itself down the hallway and was gone.

Sixtus released his temples and clutched the table edge, his entire body rigid. His neck and head arched backwards, eyes rolling up in his head until only the whites were seen. Then a piercing howl issued from his parted lips.

The eight Cardinal Bishops stood just as they'd been, their hands gripping the wineglasses still raised in toast. They appeared frozen, unable or unwilling to move.

One of the eldest dropped his glass after a moment, his hand still in the air, but no one seemed to notice.

As Sixtus roared in fury, a filmy wave passed across the eight men's vision – or was it actually a warping of illusion in the air of the room itself? – and a glimpse of something frightening appeared for just a moment, then vanished. The Pope-elect roared again, and once more the waver in space/time occurred, this time lasting long enough for the Cardinal Bishops to realize that it was not Pope Sixtus who stood before them but a creature from a nightmare, a huge hideous dragonlike creature with blackish green scales, great clawed hands, and crimson eyes with reptilian slits for pupils. A long black tongue flung itself ceilingward from his lipless mouth as the screams of outrage continued to erupt out of his bulging throat.

Bertini looked at Falliano, Mendice at Synarus; the four identical looks of horrified understanding instantly confirming their shared reality.

Two of the eldest Cardinal Bishops had fainted dead away and would never remember what they'd seen: The other two later chose to explain it away as drunken hysteria, closing their minds almost instantly against the unthinkable. But the four nearest the man had seen, and knew that what they'd seen was real.

Almost as quickly as it had come the seizure passed and Sixtus came back to himself, his normal features instantly restored. He seemed completely unaware that he had undergone a transformation in their presence, but what he did say next was almost equally shocking.

"Pope Marcus has just been murdered!" He announced coldly, then immediately strode toward the door. After he left the room those Cardinals who were still able followed cautiously behind.

Chapter 30

Monday, June 19th

Vatican City

The knock on the door broke the hushed atmosphere within the room, ripping through the tense net of fear like a concussion grenade.

All conversation ceased instantly, as the three men stared at the door, unable to move.

Joe saw the sudden end to his hopes for reunion and a happily-ever-after with Marija.

Mike saw a quiet life of solitary prayer and reflection...in prison.

Luigi saw a million faces turning away from him in loathing, a life in exile from the human race for all eternity.

The knock sounded again, longer and harder. This time an urgent whisper accompanied its demanding racket. "Archbishop!" the voice cried. "Luigi, we know you're there: Please let us in!"

The Italian sighed wearily, pushing himself up from the sagging armchair.

As he opened the door, four figures in long robes swept swiftly past.

"Well," Cardinal Falliano said after a moment, agitatedly pushing his fingers through a thick mane of silver hair. "Don't just stand there dumbfounded, Archbishop; introduce us to your Americans."

Magliano continued to stare open-mouthed at the visitors; Joe and Mike, who had risen as the Cardinals entered, remained where they stood, silent.

At last the Archbishop found his voice.

"Father Michael Muldoon, Joseph Marten, may I present you to Cardinal Bishop Mendice Secretary of State of Vatican City," he began formally, following the protocol of starting with the highest ranking official.

Joe heard Mike inhale audibly, then genuflect to kiss the sapphire ring of the tiny man whose apple-cheeked face was ringed in a fringe of soft white hair. "Your Eminence," he uttered humbly.

Joe carefully followed his example.

The same ritual of introduction was repeated in turn for Cardinal Falliano, Patriarch Synarus and Cardinal Bertini. Once the formalities had been completed, however, an awkward silence followed.

"Won't you please be seated," Michael finally offered, indicating the worn sofa and chair.

"Watch out for the springs," Joe warned with a quick little grin as the Cardinals began to sweep their robes up under them.

That helped break the tension: The Cardinals smiled back, Mendice even emitting a nervous little chuckle.

"So," said Falliano, without preamble; "tell us why you murdered Pope Marcus tonight. Tell us everything: everything you know, everything you suspect, how you happened to come here, how you were called to this task...everything!"

"Yes, _everything_ ," breathed Bertini.

The three assassins paled visibly, as if each had been struck a blow.

Joe and Luigi turned as one toward Michael, who raised an eyebrow, shrugged and accepted the task.

It was nearly 3AM before he finished their tale.

Only then did the four top leaders of the Roman Catholic hierarchy reveal that they too had witnessed the transformation of Sixtus into a demon that very night.

"We apologize for putting you through this," the diminutive secretary of state said, nodding to the three as he rose.

"But we needed confirmation," affirmed the tall, sad-eyed Patriarch, rising as well.

"We needed to be absolutely sure," agreed Bernini.

"But, but wait, what are we going to _do_ about him?" Joe blurted.

"Don't worry, my friends," Falliano assured them gravely. "It will be taken care of. Your part is done here."

"You must pack your things as quickly as possible," Mendice advised. "A limousine will meet you outside the northwest gate at," he checked his watch; "four AM. That gives you forty-five minutes."

"And I, Your Eminence?" Magliano faltered.

"You too. You're going with them."

Chapter 31

Tuesday, June 20th

Oakland, California

Joe was sitting on the edge of Marija's hospital bed, holding her hand, when Mike burst into the room carrying a folded newspaper. He could see the red "Special Edition" banner at the top of the front page even before Mike handed it to him, pointing excitedly at the headline. "THE POPE IS DEAD," it read.

"Yeah, I think we already got that," Joe grimaced, handing it back.

"No!," Mike cried, pushing it at him again. "Not Marcus, _Sixtus_!"

"What?" Joe let go of Marija's hand and opened the newspaper, reading quickly.

Pope Sixtus VI died suddenly this morning in his Vatican City apartment suite only two days after his coronation as Acting Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, making his the shortest pontifical reign in history.

According to Vatican spokesperson Cardinal Secretary of State Mauricio Mendice, who was breakfasting with the Pope when he was stricken, Sixtus VI suddenly clutched at his chest and collapsed on the table without a word. He was pronounced dead at the scene a short time later by his personal physician, Dr. Gilberto Federico. The cause of death, after a preliminary medical examination, was determined to be a coronary occlusion, leading to massive heart failure. No autopsy is planned.

"I'll bet," muttered Joe. He continued to read.

Sixtus's predecessor, Pope Marcus III, whose alleged miraculous feat of levitation at the coronation Sunday is now officially described by Vatican officials as a mass hallucination on the part of an hysterical crowd, was discovered dead in his hospital bed at the Vatican Infirmary only hours earlier. A temporary power failure apparently shut off the life support systems that had kept the comatose pontiff alive since he was stricken down by a cerebral hemorrhage ten days ago.

"A power failure!" exclaimed Joe. "Now why didn't _we_ think of that...it would have been a whole lot easier!"

He shot a look at the other man in the room. The portly Italian tweaked his mustache in response and shrugged eloquently, as if to say "You can't think of everything."

Marija just laughed, so he kissed her.

Afterword

Marija recuperated quickly that summer. With the aid of cosmetic surgery, her finely shaped nose was restored to its former beauty, with the exception of a small scar. Joe claimed it made her look slightly dangerous, after which she stopped covering it with make-up altogether.

With the aid of Joe's love, Muldoon's counseling and the absence of any more supernatural events in her life, Marija healed emotionally as well, albeit more slowly.

On August 6th of that year the Séance Double Murder Case was formally shelved by the San Francisco Police Department for lack of evidence that any known weapon could have caused the type of injuries seen. To the department's astonishment, Detective Grogan didn't raise so much as an eyebrow over the decision, let alone a formal protest.

He'd also begun whistling lately.

Fall began on a Saturday that year at 12:01 AM. Twelve hours later Marija Draekins Marten and Joseph Richard Marten were remarried in a formal religious ceremony at St. Jude's Chapel with Monsignor Michael Muldoon, now fully restored to his position as pastor, officiating.

The pre-nuptial high mass was said by the acting head of the San Francisco Archdiocese, Cardinal Luigi Magliano.

It was a beautiful ceremony. The bride was radiant, Marija's mother cried until her mascara ran, and as Grogan handed her his handkerchief he agreed, grudgingly, that they did indeed make a lovely couple.

The dragon didn't mind, not really. He was, as a result of their contamination at the Papal mass, now Bloodmaster over the more than one hundred fifty top officials of the worldwide Catholic hierarchy. Each time one of these performed the Holy Eucharist, consecrating the wine into _his_ blood, they would unknowingly bring more souls into the ranks of his unholy army.

All except the four.

The four Cardinals who'd missed taking communion at the coronation mass of Pope Sixtus as they officiated beside him, and who had then later murdered him.

Ah well, no matter. Perhaps it would take a while longer than he'd intended for his plan to come to fruition. He might have to wait a few years more before making any overt moves that might alert that highest cadre of Cardinal Bishops to his insinuating presence in the Church.

But to one who stands outside of time, the delay would be less than the blink of an eye, whereas mortal men grow old, grow forgetful, and eventually they die.

The End

not
