Sympathy for the Devil (48 page)

"
I've got a new tongue, too. Wanna see? Know who loves my tongue, Marty? Judith - she just loves the things I do to her pussy when you're away on your little exorcisms. You should hear the way she squeals when I -"

"Stevens, look here - no, right there. What do you figure that's supposed to be?"

"It's just the architect's rendering of a door, sir."

"A door, just off Corridor C-9."

"Yeah, right."

"You were down there earlier, weren't you?"

"Sure, we all were. So were you."

"Do you
remember
a fucking door in that wall?"

"I cast you out, unclean spirit, along with every Satanic power of the enemy, every specter from hell, and all your fell companions; in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ -"

"Quincey, there're in the hall - a lot of them!" Libby said.

"Can you hold the door?" Morris asked.

It depends on how they attack it - and in how many places. I'll do my best."

"Libby, listen - if they do get through, make yourself invisible, and get out when you can. You've got that spell ready, haven't you?"

'Yes, but I can't just let them -"

"Having us
both
in jail won't help anything. Having you outside just might help. Promise me, Libby!"

"Shit! All right, Quincey. All right. I promise."

Suddenly, in a voice far louder than any it had used before, the demon Sargatanas bellowed, "
We're in here you motherfuckers! We're in here!
"

"Somebody gag him," Finlay said. "Quick - I think I'm close!"

Peters, who had been standing over Mary Margaret Doyle, pulled a bandana handkerchief from his pocket and dashed over to the chair. And that is where he made his mistake.

Sargatanas had been struggling and straining against his bonds, and the chair that secured them, almost from the beginning of the exorcism. The chair was old, the joining not as firm as it could be. Sargatanas had found the left arm of the chair was coming loose. Indeed, it felt like one more good heave would pull the arm completely off.

Sargatanas had been waiting for the best moment to exploit his hidden advantage. Now he found it.

Peters came to stand in front of him, and bent over...

Sargatanas gave a mighty heave with his left arm. The chair arm pulled loose, and its momentum carried it, along with the arm it was tied to, in a vicious arc toward Peters' head.

Peters had no chance to block or duck. The wooden chair arm, with all of the demon's force behind it, took him alongside the head and knocked him sprawling.

Morris started to go to Peters, but Finlay cried out, "No, no - restrain Stark, or he'll get free. I'm nearly there, Quincey! Hold him down!"

Morris stared at Finlay for a long second. Then he scuttled around behind the chair, grabbed the loose arm with chair fragment still attached, and yanked it back down to Sargatanas's side.

Morris glanced up to see how Finlay was doing - and made inadvertent eye contact with Sargatanas. At once, his burn scar began to hurt, and the pain grew worse with each passing second.

Libby, her back pressed against the ensorcelled wall, was trying to hold it against the impact of sledgehammers from the hall. She saw that was happening. "Quincey! Hang on! Transcend the pain! Let it pass through you!"

Morris' neck felt like a branding iron was pressed against it. He screamed through gritted teeth. Tears of pain rolled down his face. His body began drip sweat.

But he did not loosen his grip.

"Begone, then, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Give place to the Holy Spirit by this sign of the holy cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever..."

"
Come closer, priest! It's not working - come closer!"

Morris felt as if he had been cut in two. Half of him was ready to pass out from the searing pain. The other half gripped the demon's arm with hands that did not weaken, did not tremble, did not move one millimeter.

Dimly, through the haze of agony, Morris could hear brickwork crashing to the floor, the sound of sledgehammers louder, then louder still.

Finlay never stopped, never wavered - until the voice from behind Morris yelled, "Federal officers - get your hands in the air!"

Finlay stepped back at last, reverently put down the prayer book, and raised his hands. Disappointment covered his face like a shroud, Morris finally released his grip and collapsed to the floor. Of Libby Chastain there was no sign.

And the demon Sargatanas laughed in triumph - and laughed, and laughed.

Enough of the bricks had been knocked away to allow the Secret Service agents access to the room. They found themselves with one man in a priest's cassock in handcuffs, two other men in civilian clothes unconscious but handcuffed, Senator Howard Stark laughing like a loon but, apparently, unharmed - and the Senator's Chief of Staff, Mary Margaret Doyle, doubled over in a metal folding chair in the corner, weeping uncontrollably.

The agents wasted no time in cutting Stark's bonds. "Senator - are you all right? Have you been injured? Do you need medical care?"

"No, no, I'm not bad at all, considering. I assume you'll be taking these maniacs off to jail."

"Absolutely, sir. We have a long list of charges in mind."

"Excellent. Did you get the woman?

"Ms Doyle? She over there sir."

"No, the other woman - Libby something."

"There was nobody else here when we broke in, sir. We got 'em all."

"I see. Very well. Perhaps I was mistaken."

"Who are these people, anyway? Religious nuts?"

"So it would seem, Special Agent. So it would seem."

Another agent, Stanley Cummings, was helping Mary Margaret Doyle to stand up. She resisted him at first, then suddenly sprang to her feet and began to move very fast, indeed.

Her left hand snaked under Cummings' suit jacket and grabbed the Sig Sauer from his holster. Her other hand, palm flat against his chest, pushed - hard.

Cummings was a big, fit man, but he'd had no reason to expect violence from this obviously harmless woman. He took an involuntary step back, lost his balance, and fell into the pile of metal chairs with a clatter.

Mary Margaret Doyle knew how to shoot - she even had a pistol permit. As a woman living alone in the murder capital of America, she'd thought the gun, and some professional instruction, justified.

Before any of the other agents could react, she had shifted the weapon to her right hand and fired off three rapid shots, two of which found their target - the chest of Senator Howard Stark.

The agents' training took over then, and Mary Margaret Doyle had barely squeezed off her third shot when she was struck by bullets from four separate Secret Service pistols. She fell over backward from the impact of the high-velocity bullets, and lost the gun when her outstretched hand struck the floor.

While one agent not-quite-frantically called for an ambulance, two others used their emergency medical training by applying pressure to Stark's wounds, which were bleeding copiously. A fourth agent, Marvin Brantley, walked cautiously over to where Mary Margaret Doyle lay supine across some metal chairs. Seeing that the weapon she'd used was well out of her reach, he knelt down next to her to assess her wounds prior to employing his own emergency first aid. Then he saw that her lips were moving. He leaned over, put his ear next to her mouth. A few seconds later, as he lifted his head up again, Mary Margaret Doyle's body spasmed twice and then was still for good.

Other agents, now supplemented by Garden employees, began to knock more bricks away, to make room for stretchers. Stan Cummings had regained his feet, and said to Brantley, "Man, I am
never
gonna live this down. "What was she - a fucking psycho? Why the fuck would she
do
that - I thought she worshipped the guy."

Brantley looked down at the still form. "Guess we'll never know."

"Did she say something? I saw you bending over her."

"I'm not sure if I heard it right," Brantley said. "It sounded like, 'Not such a monster, after all.'"

Chapter 45

In Bellevue Hospital's Intensive Care Ward, Senator Howard Stark lay clinging to life. His doctors listed his condition as 'Critical,' but to each other construed it as 'He could go either way.'

Several miles away, in her condo, Libby Chastain was entertaining a rather unusual visitor.

"I got the idea once I heard that Stark wasn't dead," Libby told her guest. "As you might imagine, getting anywhere near his room in the ICU is going to be difficult, verging on impossible, even for us."

"I bet we could've managed it," Ashley said.

"Fortunately, we don't need to. Absolutely nobody is paying attention to Stark's hotel room. There isn't even a guard on the door. Getting past the lock was child's play, and it took me only a few seconds inside to find what I was looking for."

Libby reached into the black leather bag she usually carried and removed a hairbrush - a man's hairbrush, with plenty of evidence of use still clinging to the bristles.

"This is everything we need," Libby said, "to do a little sympathetic magic."

"Yeah, maybe," Ashley said. "But taking it both ways, that's gonna be trickier than a motherfucker."

"I've always admired your colorful vocabulary," Libby said. "Does that mean you're not willing to try?"

"Fuck no, let's give it a shot. For me it's a win-win. Even if we fuck it up, I still get what I want. You're the one who's taking a risk."

"Yes, but it's one worth taking. So, you brought whatever gear you need for a working?"

"I sure did. Got it right here."

"Do you want to use the coffee table? I'll prepare mine in another room, so we don't distract each other."

"Yeah, here is fine."

"Great." Libby stood up. "Let me just grab some of this hair, and you can have the rest. Give me a shout when you're done, okay?"

"Sure - will do."

As Libby left the room, Ashley pulled some of Howard Stark's hair from the brush, and began to make her voodoo doll.

Less than an hour later, they were ready.

"I feel weird just being here and watching you do this," Libby said. "But since I'm then going to undo it -"

"Or try to."

"Or try to - I guess there's nothing that goes against the ethics of my profession."

"You really care about stuff like that, huh?"

"Yes, Ashley, I really care about stuff like that."

Libby then watched as Ashley proceeded to kill Senator Howard Stark.

She did some incantations in a language Libby didn't recognize, and lit a black candle she'd brought with her. A few more incantations followed.

Then Ashley picked up a long, straight pin, and plunged into the crudely made doll's chest - three times.

In Stark's ICU room at Bellevue, alarms began to go off, warning the nurse's station that something had gone seriously wrong in room 9. Two nurses walked rapidly toward the room, while another picked up a microphone. She thumbed it on and said, calmly, "Code Blue, ICU 9. Code Blue, ICU 9."

Soon Stark was surrounded by doctors and nurses trying to keep him alive. They tried two different injections, chest compression, and, finally, the defibrillator - twice. But the lines on the monitors continued to grow shallower and shallower.

In a condo miles away, a creature known as Ashley leaned over a black candle, and blew it out.

Within two minutes, the lines on all Stark's monitors were as flat as a pool table.

"Damn!" the attending physician, Dr. George LeMay said. He always took the death of a patient as a personal affront. "Well, maybe the autopsy will tell us what happened and we'll learn something out of this. Too bad, though. The guy almost got to be President, I hear. Would someone get me a death certificate, please? I mark time of death as 10:21 a.m."

Ashley removed the pin from her voodoo doll and sat back. "Your turn, Libby. Go for it."

Libby lit a candle of her own - a white one - and began an incantation in ancient Aramaic.

"Doctor - doctor," a nurse said excitedly, "we're getting a pulse. Look!"

"B.P. is starting to rise, doctor," another nurse said. "Respiration increasing, too."

"Get me two units of whole blood, stat!" LeMay said, then more softly, "Senator, this may just be your fucking lucky day."

After ten minutes more, Libby Chastain stopped chanting. Sweat beaded her forehead. On the coffee table, the white candle still burned.

"Think it worked?' Ashley said.

"I'll pull up a 24-hour news site on my computer. If he dies, it'll be big news, and they'll announce it at once. If we don't hear anything - well, no news is good news, as they say. You figure Sargatanas got sent back to hell, once Stark's heart stopped beating?"

"He should have - a demonic spirit can't inhabit a dead body, I know that much. Maybe I'll hear something from my boss, Astaroth - he's the one who sent Peters and me on this little mission impossible."

"Well, we did what we could," Libby said "Hey - how about coffee and some apple crumb cake?"

"Sounds fantastic. Thank you."

Later, as she finished her coffee, Ashley said, "So, you got any ideas on how we're gonna get our guys out of the slammer - short of a jailbreak, I mean. I could probably pull something like that off, but being on the run doesn't sound like a lot of fun for Peters. I bet Quincey wouldn't like it much, either."

"Well, if Stark's alive, I'm hoping he'll take care of that for us, once he's recovered. It'll take a while, which is a pain. But, as you said - a jailbreak isn't really practical."

"Well, thank you for the coffee and cake."

"You're very welcome, Ashley."

"Uh, Libby?"

"What?"

"You like girls, don't you?"

Libby looked at her for a moment or two. "Yes, I'm bisexual."

"In that case - wanna fool around?"

Libby repeated the look, for a little longer this time. "Thank you, Ashley. But I think I'm going to say, 'not right now.'"