Faustus Resurrectus (29 page)

“Not sure how much good it’ll be against anything else,” he muttered, tucking it into the small of his back, “but it should work against Valdes just fine.”

He emerged from his bedroom as the sergeant was hanging up. “Listen—I left my car parked on Ninth Avenue. Can you take me on a quick stop there? I’ve got some body armor I want to put on.”

Not sure how much good
that’ll
be, either
, Donovan thought. “Sure.”

“Getting some preliminary reports from drive-by cruisers. All of them say the park seems ‘darker’ than normal. Not chemical cloud, not smoke, just…darker.” Fullam eyed him. “Any thoughts?”

Nothing you want to hear.
“Not until I see it.”

“Fair enough,” the sergeant said, accepting but only conditionally. “For now.”

Donovan grabbed his helmet and pulled the door open. In the hallway outside his apartment stood Conrad Clery, flanked by two men. The larger of the two had dark hair and wore a dark blue windbreaker, while the smaller man had blond hair and the hand calluses of someone who practices some kind of martial art. Both men wore sneakers and loose-fitting street clothes that hid weapons. Conrad looked as though he hadn’t slept since Donovan had last seen him. Dark circles underscored his eyes, and his clothing—although obviously expensive casual sportswear and a trench coat—was rumpled and creased.

“Where is she, Donovan?”

***

Over the previous hours Joann had heard a lot of chaos. Whatever Valdes had organized, it sounded like a riot was seconds from breaking out. She heard many, many people moving about upstairs, and then silence. Before she could seriously consider what it all meant, her cell door swung open and Josie’s friend Dez appeared, brandishing a revolver. Her eyes glowed with angel dust and brimstone.

“On your feet, bitch. Time to go.”

Joann slowly stood, brushing dirt from the new, clean white dress she’d been given. She looked sadly at Donovan’s robe.

“Leave it. Ain’t gonna need it where you’re going.”

She had a fleeting thought of jumping the girl and escaping, but it was chased by the appearance of the brutish Officer Burt, who stepped behind Dez in the doorway. His labored breathing; the way he clenched and unclenched his hands; the furious glaze over his features underscored the madness Joann now sensed throughout the hospital.

They hustled her upstairs. No one else was around, but Joann got the sense that everyone she’d heard was recently gone. Outside in the compound’s courtyard Valdes, Faustus and Coeus waited by a hotwired Parks Department maintenance truck. They made an odd, bizarre trio: Valdes wore a dark suit, crisp white shirt, bold purple and red patterned tie and well-polished black dress shoes, looking every inch the executive approaching a career-making deal. The giant shifted from one enormous foot to the other, eager to be somewhere. He was dressed in his usual stitched-together black suit and t-shirt, his sunglasses polished to soulless black lenses. Faustus, in his navy blue scholar’s robes, leaned on the edge of the truck’s cargo space, looking out of place but serene. Whatever issues he might have had about the roles of man and devils and shadows were now either resigned to or resolved. The feeling Joann got was of the former—felons got the same air when an unfavorable plea bargain was reached. A tiny bubble of hope burst in her chest.

I know the answer!
She wanted to scream.
I can solve your problem!

Valdes came forward to greet her, taking her arm and hand in his grasp. “Ah, Joann. Good to have you with us.”

She looked him over for signs of insanity but saw only determination. “Where are you taking me?”

“To destiny—yours, theirs,” he glanced at Faustus and Coeus, “and mine.” She stared at him. He raised his eyebrows politely. “Was there something else?”

“I’m just waiting for the crash of thunder and maniacal laughter.”

“Religious ritual, I’m finding, brings out the melodramatic in me.” A sly grin spread across his face. “Who knew?” He nodded at Officer Burt, who pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt. Joann took an involuntary step away. The barrel of Dez’s gun stopped her moving back any further. “We can cuff you,” Valdes continued, “or we can make you entirely helpless.” He looked towards Central Park, and Faustus’s words about man and devils came to life in his gaze. “Which would you prefer?”

Her heart pounded, and she held her wrists stiffly in front of her. Officer Burt slapped the steel bracelets in place, then lifted her into the pick-up’s cargo space.

“You wanna drive, Mister Valdes?” Dez asked, holding the driver’s door open.

“No, my dear, you go ahead. You and Officer Burt take the cab. It’s such a nice night we four will ride back here.”

Joann sat on a wheel hump as the three men climbed into the cargo space next to her. In contrast to Valdes’s good humor, Faustus maintained a stone face. An almost overpowering need to speak to him swelled her throat. She held back as the entire truck sagged under Coeus’s added weight. Valdes remained standing, bracing himself against the cab’s roof.

Dez backed the truck out of the compound carefully, not wanting to stagger her leader’s stance. The truck bounced gently on the curb, then moved down 106
^th
Street to Central Park West and made a right turn. A few cabs and a newspaper truck were the only traffic about the streets. Glancing at Valdes’s watch, Joann saw it was almost eleven o’clock. She looked around at buildings she’d seen many times before. Now they seemed alien, the pattern of lit windows forming strangely menacing shapes. Thoughts of her father and the safety of the world he represented stung her eyes. She recalled the dinner she’d had at Polaris with Donovan, Father Carroll and Fullam.

“Worse than torturing twelve men to death and dismembering them?”

“You have no idea.”

She swallowed and blinked back tears of fright.

Even he couldn’t have expected this, though…could he have?

Dez took the turn into the access road on 85
^th
Street and followed it to the park’s West Drive. They didn’t stay there long; with another bounce they went off-road, heading for the Great Lawn. Streetlights kept some parts of their path lit, but there were too many patches of darkness and shadow for Joann to have felt comfortable under the best of circumstances. Now they were surrounded by insanity.

Screams filled the night. Derelicts swept through the brush and fields, driving victims forward, herding them like cattle into the slaughterhouse chute. They attacked anyone they encountered, cutting short cries for mercy with fists and clubs and knives. The violence was absolute and unyielding. Whatever Valdes had done to them, the mob swarmed through the park in a berserker rage. Despair withered her resolve. Everywhere she looked she saw gruesome, horrible death inflicted. The police were their first targets, the sheer numbers of the mob canceling any advantage of guns or vehicles. Such sudden, absolute savagery shocked people until screams shattered the moment, spurring everyone into frenzied dashes for safety. There was none.

On the Great Lawn ahead, she saw a concert full of Lilith Fair-types hacked to pieces even as the murderous wave overwhelmed patrons of the Delacorte Theater. People who joined together to fight were overrun. Those who offered no resistance were crushed. Blood was everywhere, spattered on trees and puddled in the dirt as the dying pleaded for rescue. Revulsion filled her throat. Joann turned to Valdes with tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Why?”

Even he seemed surprised by the intensity of what he’d spawned. Her words brought him out of his reverie, and she sensed a change within him on some core level. He surveyed the situation with the dispassion of a general observing the tide of battle. “Sacrifices must be made for the greater good.”

“What greater good could possibly—”

“Mine.” He turned to her. On the surface he was in control, but in his eyes she could see that the core change had released in him a terrible darkness and determination. “
My
greater good.” He tapped the roof of the truck cab. “Park it over near the top of the Great Lawn, please, Dez. Then you and Officer Burt may go join the others.”

The streetlights surrounding the Great Lawn remained mostly intact. The illumination they provided showed the oval space was a true killing field, grass and dirt soaked red, patches churned into crimson mud. Valdes’s mob was out of control, slashing and bludgeoning, slaughtering innocents as their own screams rose to fury-heightened pitches. A group of four people ran for the truck, thinking it a safe haven, until they saw Coeus. They stopped short and were tackled from behind, screams drowned by the shouts of the mob. Dez swerved and jerked to a stop, kicked the door open and disappeared into the chaos almost before Joann could register it happening. Officer Burt lumbered after her, wheezing.

Something caught Valdes’s attention. “Be useful,
Herr Doktor
. Tie Joann to that tree.” He tossed the keys to the handcuffs over and seized a tire iron from the back of the truck. “I’ll be right back.”

Joann watched him stalk over to a scraggly man who stood above an unconscious woman. The scraggly man was undoing his stained, baggy trousers and giggling. The pants dropped to the ground and he knelt between the woman’s legs, tearing at her dress. Valdes came up behind him and slammed the tire iron into the side of his skull. The scraggly man crumpled, brain and blood leaking into the grass.

“These people are sacrifices, not playthings!” Valdes commanded in a no-nonsense voice. “Maintain your focus. Control your desire for now.”

The sorcerer climbed down from the truck, keeping his eyes on the sky, looking north towards the Cancer Hospital. Precise in his movements, he kept his eyes above everything going on around them. Joann willed him to look at her, but he resisted as he led her by the cuffs to the tree Valdes had indicated.

“How can you let this happen?” she asked, her voice pleading for intercession. “Don’t you have any compassion?”

“Faustus doth what Fate commandeth,” he muttered as he secured her to the tree with clothesline. After he drew the line taut, he undid the cuffs and strapped her hands down as well. “This canst he not alter.”

Joann desperately squeezed her eyes shut. The sounds of brutality and suffering rang in her ears and her soul, gasping, crying, begging. “I know the answer. I know the answer to what you asked me.”

“
Was? Welche Frage?
A question Faustus asked?”

The words came out fast, as though the sooner she said them the sooner the madness would end. “You asked me before—‘what is the answer when two claim ownership of the same thing?’ I know.”

He said nothing, and although she couldn’t watch him because that would mean opening her eyes, Joann felt him finish tying the knots. She sensed him moving around the tree to stand in front of her. With enormous will and effort she peered at him through slitted lids. There was no madness or anger in his demeanor, and barely any curiosity.

“Speak, woman.”

“
Si una eademque res legatur duobus, alter rem, alter valorem rei
.” Faustus folded his arms, waiting. Panic ripped her.
Did I get the Latin right? I did! I know I did!
“
Si una eademque res legatur duobus, alter rem, alter valorem rei
,” she repeated. “Do you understand?”

“‘If something is bequeathed to two persons, one shall have the thing itself,’” his lips pursed, “‘the other something of equal value.’
Ja
, Faustus doth understand—”

He paused and looked north. Joann watched him steel himself even though she detected no imminent bodily threat. Seconds later she felt it, a vibration of some indeterminate energy that reverberated in the wood of the tree she was tied to, along the ground, and in the air itself. A dark haze welled around them. She blinked, trying to clear the tears and shadows from her vision. The shadows remained, seeping fear and sadness into her soul. Desperately she followed Faustus’s gaze skyward and saw an enormous mass above them, swelling like a storm cloud. All around them members of Valdes’s mob also felt the darkness. They stood motionless, looking up with awe. As the cloud grew thicker, white flashes within it strobed contrast to the blackness. Something rumbled, heavy and fearsome, but it wasn’t thunder.

“What’s going on?”

“Emotion doth energize magic,” Faustus murmured. “The darker the emotion…”

Dez staggered into view, dragging a semi-conscious elderly woman past the truck and in front of Joann. “Hey, bitch! Wanna see what you’re missing?” She drew a hunting knife from a sheath and slit the elderly woman’s throat, cutting so deeply Joann could see the gaping hole of her windpipe. “How about
that
?!”

A white flash shot downwards. Joann gasped. The bolt struck Dez in the chest, knocking her back past the truck and to the ground. Darkness swirled like a fog, obscuring the view. She shrieked. Joann wondered if it was fear or excitement. Something popped up where Dez had fallen, or at least Joann thought she saw something. Between the darkness and an odd flickering she couldn’t blink away it was difficult to be sure. The figure moved closer. What the ambient light of the park illuminated remained solid, but past the brightness she had become a wraith, entirely defined by the edge dividing light and darkness. Beyond that border Joann sensed the monstrous, and she was grateful she couldn’t see her fully.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter…

She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them and squinted. Each movement Dez made played optical tricks that switched her from two- to three-dimensional and back as light struck her at different angles, revealing glimpses of ghastly, pale bluish-white flesh, the skin of an asphyxiated corpse. All of the color had evaporated from her irises; only pinpricks of black pupil remained, filled with malevolent intelligence. Her black lips drew back impossibly far, revealing teeth as jagged as broken glass. She moved forward—it wasn’t a step, exactly, but more an insectoid creep, like the stiff grace of a praying mantis. Joann’s heart raced, her hold on reality growing more tenuous. Part of Dez’s leg crossed the headlight beam. She leapt back with a shriek as wisps of grayish smoke wafted from inside her clothing. Reflexively she lashed out. Joann heard a juicy, wet sound, like a knife cutting into a watermelon, and a long scythe blade unfolded from her forearm. She slashed it down, chopping off the headlight and half of the truck’s front.