Fires Rising (34 page)

"I'm sorry…"

Pilazzo used the beads to cross himself, then closed his eyes and took Henry Miller out of his misery with a heavy slam of his foot on the foreman's deformed skull.

He nearly slipped down in the spray of blood and gristle. He gagged, paused to take a deep breath, then staggered to the open front doors of St Peter's church.

Father Anthony Pilazzo stepped outside.

He stood on the top step, looking at the smoke filling the street. He raised his head to the break of early morning sunlight and allowed the golden beams to rain down upon his eyes…eyes that had been buried in blood and darkness for the past twenty-four hours.

Jyro stepped in alongside him. "You did it. The fires…they're no longer burning."

Pilazzo remained silent for a minute or more, then looked at Jyro. The vagrant was a bloody mess, beaten and worn, but free of serious injury.

"How did you manage to survive?" Pilazzo asked.

Jyro held up his fist. It was clenched tightly. Pilazzo remembered how Jyro had held his hand out to him in the hallway before being pulled back into the fray in the rectory.

How he seemed to want to show something to him and Timothy.

He opened his hand and showed the priest how he lived through the slaughter.

In his palm was a single bead from the rosary. It was cracked in two. "When you've lived on the streets father, you find ways to survive."

And with that, Jyro walked down the steps of St. Peter's church, turning only once to say, "Thanks, Father," before disappearing around the corner of 78
^th
Street.

Two years later.

"M
ay the lord be with you."

"And also with you."

"Go in peace," he instructed the parishioners, who immediately began filing out of the church of St Elizabeth. Father Anthony Pilazzo bowed to the assembly and quickly stepped off the altar into the rectory. Ignoring those milling about, drinking coffee and eating bagels, he hurriedly paced to his room, feeling tired and not in any particular mood to engage in conversation. He'd been unable to sleep last night. Father Hautala had snored up a hurricane, keeping the rest of the priests—Monsignor Reinhardt included—in the kitchen playing a friendly game of rummy until four A.M.

He entered his room. It was meagerly decorated: an aluminum-framed twin bed alongside a small end-table supporting a shaded lamp and telephone. On the opposite wall was an easy-chair and small television. Like the rest of the rectory, the floor was carpeted in dull blue, a cotton curtain in a near-matching color shading the room's only window.

Sheets of rain slashed the dark pane. He pulled the curtain aside and gazed outside, watching as the cars of those fortunate to be alive made their way home.

Things were much different here in the suburbs than in the city. Friendlier. Closer-knit. He liked it, but again wondered:
could it happen
here?

He kneeled down alongside his bed, folded his hands and recited a prayer, then opened the nightstand drawer, thinking back to the moment he stepped out of St Peter's church on 78
^th
Street, two years ago. The sky…it had been painted gray by the smoke rising from the fires that had burned throughout Manhattan. Still, the sun's light had eaten its way through a hole in that dark tapestry, helping to guide him to safety. He'd still held the rosary of the Mother of God in his hands, and had used it to thank God for his survival, to say a prayer for those who had perished in the beast's game: Timothy and the others, brave souls who'd seen the threat of evil rising before their jaded eyes; who'd made every last effort to combat it; who'd eventually surrendered their very lives to the cause.

In the days that followed the events at St. Peter's, he'd kept tabs on the news, how the fires burning in the city had eventually been extinguished, and that those suffering from rage and hysteria had magically shaken their ills and returned to normal states of mind.

Those reporting the events had never mentioned that the fires had not been snuffed out beneath the brave hands of firefighters. The truth was that they had simply disappeared, leaving behind thick columns of smoke that lingered in the air for weeks, plus a wicked trail of destruction that to this day was still being rebuilt.

A month later—after
The Calming
, as the peaceful days that followed were fittingly referred—he joined the parish in upstate NY, taking part in the weekly services, but mostly hearing the confessions of those who'd felt tempted by inexplicable evils since the
Rise Of Fires
. Pilazzo explained time and time again that the influence of the beast was not only present, but it was strong, and that as God's children we must make every effort to avoid his ongoing temptations.

He shook away the thoughts, wondering how much time had passed. Without looking at the clock, he reached into the drawer and pulled aside a short stack of underwear and balled-up socks. Here was a lock box, made of gray steel with a small handle on top. He removed it, reached into his pocket, and shook out his keychain—a dozen or so keys ringed together with the brass cross Father Sangiovanni had given him upon his acceptance into the parish.

He fingered the smallest key. Slowly, he slid it into the lock on the box.

He turned it. There was an audible click.

He opened the box.

Looked at its contents.

He reached a hand inside and removed the rosary, now brown and chipped and charred, looking nothing like the miraculous charm it had been two years ago. Everyday he would repeat this routine: he'd take out the rosary and attempt to work his fingers about the beads and tiny charms, hoping for another sign from God…a sign that everything would be all right in the end.

But nothing came.

And he was beginning to realize why.

He wasn't pure of heart any more. Devoid of sin.

He was a murderer now.

He'd killed Henry Miller.

And he thought back to how he brought his weighty foot down on the head of the innocent man who was somehow alive in the jumbled mess of his body, how he'd taken away what little time remained of his life—the life of a man who was merely an innocent pawn in some great, diabolical game. And after that, he escaped the burning church, into the guiding rays of sunlight that broke through the veil of smoke in the skies. He'd shoved his free hand in his pocket and felt something there. Using two fingers, he pulled out the plastic card that Henry Miller had given him when he first arrived at the church, the word VISITOR emblazoned across the center, Pale Horse Construction printed in smaller letters above. He dropped the card onto the cement sidewalk, watching it tumble end over end and land face-down. He turned, gazed at the still-open doors of the church, then ran back up the stairs. He went back into the church, stepping over Miller's lumpy remains, sidestepping flames and holding his breath, eyeing the burning heap in front of him that used to be the wooden Jesus, looking for…

He placed the rosary back in the box.

And removed the chalice.

And realized with equal amounts of dismay and curiosity that as much as the rosary required someone pure of heart to work its magic, so did the chalice need a hostage of sin to realize its evil.

Perhaps
, Pilazzo thought,
someone who has committed murder?

He gazed deeply into the chalice, thinking back to the rush of power and strength he felt while under the influence of the rosary…and wondered what level of power he could summon with the chalice.

He looked at the rosary, sitting at the bottom of the steel box like a dead snake.

Then, back at the chalice.

He rubbed it gently. And smiled

It began glowing bright red...

Somewhere in the city, in a dark, cold, damp hole beneath the streets, a homeless man sleeps. His name is Jyro, and in his dreams he sees fires rising high into the sky. He startles awake, terrified, knowing that somewhere, someplace, it is beginning again…