The Keys of Solomon (20 page)

Events of the past sixteen hours had sapped his considerable reserves of energy, and nothing had prepared him for the encounter with Acuna. Furthermore, Arturo was afraid this was just the beginning. For years, Arturo had taken tremendous satisfaction in his double identity, serving God and man through both of his chosen vocations, first as a law enforcement officer for the Vatican, and from his more secretive involvement with the Watchers. However, after events of this afternoon he was ready for a career change.

He had managed to smuggle the journal out of Vatican City just minutes before he was called back to the office of the Vatican Corps of Gendarmes. It was now safely in the hands of his Watcher contact, and on the way out of the country. And not a moment too soon.

Understandably, the Vatican was in shock over the murder-suicide and had launched a full-scale investigation. Arturo went through the motions, writing reports that covered his arrival on the scene and his offer to assist Piero with the search of Acuna's apartment. Of course, Arturo avoided any mention of the journal. That information was for the Watchers alone.
And such information!
If the entries were credible, and Arturo now harbored no doubt that they were, the Holy See was already under attack by demonic influences from within. It was an unthinkable, horrific situation, but there it was: Through possession and enthrallment, Legion had contaminated the Church from both without and within.

Arturo carried the bottle and wineglass into the living room and sat down hard upon the sofa. He kicked off his loafers, drained his glass, and refilled it. He closed his eyes and silently recited the prophecy uttered a little more than three decades earlier, in a small church in Akita, Japan, in 1973. The prophecy was well known to all of his brethren within the Watchers, and almost all of the hierarchy of Vatican City.

The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres … churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demons will press many priests and consecrated souls …

The Watchers had known of this prophecy long before events in Akita. A very similar warning had been found carefully stamped into a thin sheet of copper and left in the belly of Solomon's Temple centuries before. That scroll, together with others also found and secreted away by the original Templars, pointed to this day, the time in which Legion would infiltrate the Church and pave the way toward the most catastrophic event in human history, the End of Days.

Murders inside the Holy See. People stalking me. Dead men riding on the hood of my car … Sweet Mother of God!

Reconciling experience with faith was sometimes an impossibility and this was one of those instances. Nothing would convince Arturo that he hadn't seen, with his own eyes, a dead murderer glaring at him from atop the hood of his car. Nor could anything destroy his faith in his Christian belief that dead men do not walk again except by the power and authority of God Almighty. Arturo was also convinced that God had nothing to do with the reanimated corpse of one Father Raoul Acuna. Thus, as a career law enforcement officer and natural investigator with a highly intuitive and analytical mind, Arturo reasoned that there must be a new set of factors at play. Factors that did not adhere to the laws of God. But was that not contradictory to the Christian belief that nothing existed without God? Given the seemingly impossible occurrences and circumstances, Arturo arrived at a single, staggering conclusion:
The End of Days are upon us.

Arturo finished his wine and made his way into the bedroom. For now, there was little else to do but remain on his guard while he awaited further instructions from his superior within the Watchers. Those instructions would likely come before the evening was out, and no doubt, he would be very busy over the next few days. It was even possible that he would be ordered to abandon his post at the Vatican and travel to Belgium, or perhaps the States, in order to take a more direct role in the upcoming supernatural war.
If I'm lucky.

Arturo yawned and rubbed his eyes. He must report the incident with Acuna, but it would have to wait. Regardless of what lay ahead, his overtaxed mind needed rest and separation from the unholy events he had witnessed earlier. After today, he might not get another chance to rest for several days. Rising from the sofa, he set the wineglass on the kitchen table. He retrieved his keys, then made his way to the bedroom with the laptop under his arm.

Night was still a couple of hours away, but as a cop who had worked the midnight shift for nearly a decade, Arturo knew the secret to sleeping during daylight hours. The bedroom windows were covered with thick sheets of aluminum foil and heavy drapes. He turned on a lamp. Nothing looked disturbed or out of place. A steel four-drawer filing cabinet occupied one corner of the room. Arturo deposited the laptop in the bottom drawer and locked the cabinet with the inset key, then with a hasp and heavy padlock. As soon as the padlock was in place, he breathed a little easier. It wasn't as if the cabinet couldn't be breeched, but he felt confident that it would require a hell of an effort.
I'll delete all the files after I get some sleep. Please, God, let me sleep!

Arturo undressed in silence and placed his suit on a hanger inside the closet. As was his custom, he shut the closet door, then closed the bedroom door and locked it. Finally, he laid the semi-automatic handgun in its customary position near the telephone on his bedside table. After all the preparations were complete, he collapsed upon the bed.

For several minutes, he lay in the dark as grotesque visions of a dead Father Acuna drifted through his tired mind. Arturo pushed the images away, and focused on the steady
thrum
of the apartment's central air unit. As his mind and body slowly surrendered to fatigue, he thought,
What becomes of us now? Dear God, what becomes of us now?

*   *   *

“Arturo. Help meeee, Arturo.”

Still groggy, Arturo propped up on an elbow and wiped the sleep from his eyes. The temperature had dropped several degrees and he shivered beneath the light blanket. A glance at the luminous dial of the bedside clock showed the time: 7
P.M.
He had slept less than two hours, a deeply disturbed sleep filled with ominous dreams and a disembodied voice pleading for sanctuary. Again and again, the choked, gurgling voice of a drowning man begged for Arturo to save him.
Help meeee, Arturo. Pleasssse, help meeee!
Though it was a call for assistance, the words seemed
wrong
, insincere, perhaps even taunting.
But that's crazy. Makes no sense,
he thought. Then Arturo reminded himself that most dreams made no sense. He stretched to relieve the kinks from the stiff muscles in his shoulders and neck, then lay back on the stack of pillows.

The short rest, filled with an unceasing kaleidoscope of disturbing dream images, had done nothing to refresh his mind or body.
Need more sleep.
He rolled over onto his side and pulled the blankets up to his chin.
Damn. It's colder than a witch's tit in a brass brassiere.

“Arturo, why won't you help meeee?”

Arturo froze. The horrendous voice that had invaded his dreams now invaded his bedroom.

Careful to remain silent for fear of giving away his precise location, Arturo inched his hand toward the nightstand. Trembling fingers brushed against the handgun, then found the base of the lamp. He clicked the switch and picked up the gun in a single, fluid motion. Shielding his eyes against the brilliant one-hundred-watt bulb with his free hand, he swung the gun around to cover the rest of the bedroom. Nothing. He was alone.

The voice had come from less than a dozen feet away.
I'm awake, so I know it's not a dream. Am I hallucinating or is this more of the same from this afternoon?
Silently, he prayed that it was a hallucination.
Mother of God, I need a drink. Or a valium. Or both.

He climbed out of bed and flinched as his bare feet made contact with the icy vinyl floor tiles. It was then that he noticed the frosty puffs of his breath as they drifted in the air. He padded across the cold floor to the bathroom and checked the wall-mounted thermostat.
Seventy-eight degrees! Impossible!
Overhead, he could hear the rumble of the central heating unit. He held a hand to the face of the outlet vent. The heating unit and blower seemed fine, as a strong, steady stream of warm air entered the room.
This makes no sense!

Shaking his head in frustration, Arturo opened the medicine cabinet and reached for the bottle of valium. He dropped two of the pink heart-shaped pills into his hand, hesitated, then placed one of the tablets back into the bottle. One tablet would encourage restful sleep, while two might knock him out for several hours. He couldn't afford to sleep too deeply and miss an important call from his Watcher contact. As he swallowed the pills, he heard a distinctive
click
from the bedroom. Whirling about, he saw the room was now dark. Someone had turned off the bedside lamp.

“No, no. I'm imagining things again. The lamp blew a bulb, nothing more.…”

“Arturo, help meeee. Pretty Arturo! Pleasssse.”

Arturo's hand moved instinctively to his side where the shoulder holster normally hung. This time, there was no holster and no gun. He had left both on the nightstand. He dropped into a crouch and pressed his back to the bathroom wall. Fluorescent light from the bathroom illuminated the bedroom, all but the far corner just beyond the closet.
The closet!
The door was now standing open.

I know damn well I shut that door. I never leave it open!

“Come, lovely Arturo. Help me.” The same terrible voice now called to him from deep inside the closet, mocking him. Cold. Malevolent. Dripping with scorn and contempt. This was no hallucination, though he desperately wished otherwise. He thought of his handgun still lying on the nightstand and mentally estimated the distance across the floor and around the king-size bed. It was a long way across the expansive bedroom, but what choice did he have? As Arturo crept forward through the doorway, the bathroom light flickered twice, then died with a distinctive
pop
. The acrid odor of a fried fluorescent ballast filled his nostrils.

Now he stood in total darkness without so much as a sliver of light penetrating the heavy drapes and foil-covered windows. There was only one thing he could do. Knees bent and head down, he ran across the hardwood floor toward the bed. After a half dozen steps, his shin connected painfully with the bed's iron railing. Arturo pitched forward onto the mattress and rolled. As he reached the head of the bed, he groped for the handgun until he located it on the nightstand. Once the gun was in his grasp, he rolled off the bed and onto the floor.

The thing in the closet laughed. A low chuckle at first, rising to a malicious, gleeful howl. Though Arturo was virtually blind in the darkness, he had lived in the apartment for years and knew the precise layout of the bedroom. He trained the gun on the closet and fought to control his breathing. Instinct told him his adversary was in its element and that as long as he remained in the darkened room, it held every advantage. He decided to make a run for the living room, and if the lights were out in there as well, he would move outside into the hall.

As he rose from his position behind the bed, the laughter subsided and the voice called out to him. However, this time it didn't call to him from the closet. Now it was closer. Much closer.

“You cannot leave, pretty Arturo. Come to me.” The words came at him from every direction, as if it now somehow surrounded the room or … as if the one had become many.

Arturo turned for the bedroom door, then shrieked as a hand snaked out from beneath the bed and grabbed his ankle. He landed hard on the floor, the gun flying from his hand and sliding out of reach. “NO!”

Something pierced, then peeled away the tender flesh of his calf muscle, then embedded deep within the bone. Arturo screamed again. His assailant, speaking with a grotesque cacophony of discordant voices, pulled him toward the bed.

“Sweet Arturo. Pretty Arturo. Bad Arturo! Give us the book! The book!” Arturo's legs disappeared beneath the bed, and he screamed again as skin and hunks of flesh were torn from both legs.

With his last reserves of will and resolve, Arturo dug his fingernails into the hardwood planks, and prayed aloud. He was no longer fighting for his life for he knew that was forfeit. Now he was fighting for his soul. Through broken sobs, he intoned “Holy … Mary, Mother of God … oh, my God! P-pray for us sinners … now and at … the hour of our death.”

“The book, bad Arturo! Give it back to us!” The voices were no longer filled with scorn and mockery. Now every word dripped with the venom of rage and hatred.

As Arturo's shoulders and head disappeared beneath the king-size bed, he closed his eyes a final time. An unexpected, overwhelming feeling of peace and solace welled up within his chest, its supernatural warmth spreading throughout his broken, tortured body.

“Amen.” With a word, Arturo Giannini's final burden on this earth was lifted.

CHAPTER 14

Phoenix, Arizona

Sam walked back to the sofa and claimed his former seat. It wasn't so much that he preferred the overstuffed couch to one of the chairs, but he needed an excuse to ensure that the road atlas was well out of sight. He didn't want to explain its presence in the hotel room or the similar markings on the Arizona and Tennessee maps.

Enrique took the chair near the windows and opened his briefcase while Falco returned to the recliner. Though the seating arrangements seemed random and informal, Sam knew better. The two men had chosen vantage points that allowed unobstructed views of the front door.
They think they're so friggin' smart! If they knew what I knew about the Enemy, they'd be keeping an eye on all the doors, the windows, the ceiling, and the toilet drain.