The Lucifer Messiah (26 page)

“She used to be a man?”

Charybdis joined them then, from behind. Nearly naked herself, the peculiar albino beauty of her true form was laid bare for all to see. She was tall, with lanky limbs that seemed to dangle off her. A soft white aura, pure as new-fallen snow, radiated from her skin, perhaps cast beneath a perpetual spotlight. And while clearly possessed of the delicate features of a young woman, her black hair was close-cropped and manly.

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose you could say she used to be a man,” she said, careful to step between Vince and the slime-trailing thing. “Gender is a very dicey subject among our kind. Honestly, most of us really don't consider ourselves one sex or the other, but I always found that a little too shifty.”

“Charybdis? Is that you?” Glaucus interrupted.

His eye-stalks arched to get a good look at her. He was a little startled by the ashen-pale woman who wore only a folded gray cloak.

“Indeed, old friend,” she replied, with a wave of her very long hand. “My true self has returned.”

“Very well. Vincenzo, have you met our master's chief aide, Charybdis?” Glaucus asked.

“We have met, yes,” Charybdis said, answering for Vince. “But I'd doubt that Mr. Sicario would recall. I had not yet entered the cocoon at the time. He saw me as the African female I had been since the last molting.”

Glaucus gave the best nod he could with his strange head.

“But, my own image aside, you were speaking of Medea, were you not?” Charybdis said.

“Oh yes,” Glaucus continued. “Medea happens to share my own view of things. He was born male if I'm not mistaken, and if I remember correctly, he ends up male more often than not at the end of every molting season. It's just during this time of the year, when he reverts back to his
natural form
that he appears female. And quite beautiful, as you've obviously noticed.”

“So he was born a man, but he changes back into a woman every year?” Vince questioned.

“Exactly. His name is female, Medea was a woman in the old Greek tales, but that really has no significance here,” Charybdis answered. “I suppose he could consider himself female, but I believe he had much the same experience as I had. Both he and I formed our identities as males before we entered our first molting, in our late teens. Like him, I still prefer the trappings of manhood, despite my present appearance.”

“I never woulda guessed that,” Vince answered.

“Don't worry, you're new, you'll get used to it,” Glaucus
answered. “Look at me. I'm much the same.”

Vince cocked his head at the suggestion, somewhat bemused. His grotesque new friend was hardly offended.

“I don't mean literally, of course,” he chided. “I too have spent several years, 1937, 1921, 1886, oh yes now
that
was a good year, all as a woman. The point is that I have been female many times myself. Most of us have been at one time or another.

“And I was quite a lovely little lady too, if I do say so myself,” Glaucus said.

Charybdis laughed, but her mirth was not long lived.

“My friend, I wonder that I might have a word alone with this new one?” she offered.

“Of course,” Glaucus replied, obviously deferential to the stern-looking albino. “I shall take my leave then, and wish you the best of luck Mr. Vincenzo. Perhaps we will meet again.”

“Right,” Vince answered as it skulked away, leaving a glistening, sticky film in its wake.

“I do apologize for that. This must be very strange for you, I realize,” Charybdis said, offering him a seat as she reclined on the altar steps. Her legs were as long and skinny as her arms. She seemed to stretch out over half the steps when she leaned over.

“You could say that,” he replied, still fairly numb, even in conversation.

“Perhaps I should attempt to explain,” she said.

“Explain … this?” he asked, smirking.

“That may be a little much. And to be honest, the less
you know, the better it will be for you. You've already seen far too much as it is,” she answered.

“Then what?”

“Your importance to us, to Argus. We have no wish to harm you, despite what you may have heard Argus say. He has only kept you here for your own safety, and to bring Lucifer closer to us.”

“Okay,” it was all he could think to say, pretty much anything sounded reasonable under the current circumstances.

“You have known Lucifer for a long time, yes?”

Vince stared back blankly. Charybdis understood his puzzlement.

“Of course, he's not Lucifer to you, is he? Sean, then. You have known him for many years.”

“You could say that, I guess. I knew him years ago. I thought I did anyway. We grew up together, same neighborhood, you know? But he left during the War, the first war. I hadn't seen him since, not until a few days ago.”

Charybdis smiled, and she laughed.

“Somethin' funny about that?” Vince questioned.

“No. He was one of us once, as well. Many years ago. But he left our fold too. Lucifer does not like to stay in one place for very long.”

“Lucifer. Why do you call him that?”

“That is his name among us, among his kind.”

Vince again did not respond, except to furrow his brow and fix a silent stare into her eyes.

“Surely by now you must have guessed that you are not
among ordinary folk.”

“You don't look so strange, a little pale maybe, but nothin' compared to that last guy or the fella with all the eyes.”

“Argus, yes. He is truly an unusual specimen, even among us. As for myself, however I appear to you now is merely a phase, a temporary form. In a matter of days, this will pass away again. Not a moment too soon, as well, I can assure you.”

“What the hell are you people?”

The comment was half-intended as an insult. But to Vince's surprise, Charybdis took no offense. In fact, she grinned.

“That's debatable. Depends on who you talk to,” she answered. “Argus believes that we are a noble and ancient race, banished from our rightful place in the world, and destined to return to our former glory one day. The Morrigan on the other hand, she seems to think that we exist only to serve her.”

“And you?” the answer had hardly satisfied Vince's curiosity, but he still wasn't sure if he wanted to know any more.

Charybdis sneered, and she sighed.

“No one has ever been much interested in my opinion, except perhaps for Lucifer. If you care then, I'll tell you what I told him. I say we are a cursed lot, the damned walking silently among the saved, to put it in the Christian vernacular.”

“And what did he think?”

“When I knew him I suspect he might have agreed with me. He was a wretch in those days, lost and more
scared of himself than anything else. Argus and I found him,
rescued him
according to the ancient one. He stayed with us, at our Haven in Prague, for almost a year.”

“Prague, huh? As in Czechoslovakia? What the hell was he doing there?”

“Wandering, drinking, causing trouble.”

“Sounds like Sean.”

“As closely as were able to discern, he came to Europe in 1917 as a part of the American Expeditionary Force, but he left his unit during the War. He first came to our attention in St. Petersburg.”

“Florida?”

“Russia, what they're calling Leningrad today.”

“Guy got around, didn't he?”

“Indeed. He left quite an impression as well, as you might imagine. I sit here today because of him, in fact,” Charybdis said.

“Really?”

“Again, a rather long story. In any case, after Russia we lost track of him ourselves for nearly six years, until he wandered quite accidentally into Argus's jurisdiction, which used to be Prague.”

“He'd just been walking around in Europe since 1917?”

“Apparently so. He was never willing to discuss it much, and I was perhaps the closest person to him at the Haven.”

“Haven? There's that word again, as in the Bleecker Street Haven?”

“Yes, our safe-house in New York. We have them all over the world, places for our kind to rest, and to do various
other things.”

“What
other
things did you do there?” Vince asked, with a wink.

“Nothing as sinister as you may be thinking, my friend,” Charybdis answered, a smile on her own lips. “We tried to teach him the ways of our kind, our history, and our traditions.”

“What happened?”

“He was reluctant at first, then he seemed to accept some of what we had to show him, but it always seemed to me that he never really wanted to be among his own kind, he never felt like one of us. Argus ignored my worries. I thought we were becoming close, he and I, but then one day, he simply vanished.”

“Vanished?”

“Yes, Lucifer you see, has some rather,
unique
abilities.”

Vince laughed. This time it was Charybdis's turn to be confused.

“Do you know something about that?” she asked.

“What you're talkin' about? Not a clue. But unique is the right word for Sean, you hit that one on the nose.”

“Tell me.”

“It's kind of a long story.”

“Have we anything but time?”

Vince could not argue.

“Well, okay. Sean was always a wild one. We used to fight all the time, when we were kids, you know? Our buildings were close to each other, about a block away. But his was on Thirty-Eighth, which was a mick block, and
mine was on Thirty-Ninth Street, at the time one of the few Italian areas of Hell's Kitchen. So naturally, we hated each other.”

“Oh, naturally,” Charybdis replied. She didn't quite understand, but the logic seemed to make sense to Vince.

“He was kind of a small kid, we were about the same age, but I was much bigger than him. Anyway, there was always a lot more micks in the Kitchen than guineas like me, especially in those days; we're talking about 1910 or so here. They didn't like us movin' into their neighborhood, and we had it out with them guys almost every day. Sean, even though he was a little punk, he was a loudmouth, and he took a beatin' all the time. From me personally quite few times, in fact. Stubborn little jerk never gave up, though, didn't matter how much you pounded on his ass one day, he'd be back the next day still calling you a dumb dago right to your face.”

“Yes, difficult man to discourage, isn't he?” Charybdis echoed.

“Right. So then there's this one day, we've got to be about eleven or twelve by then. My mother, God rest her soul, was sick, couldn't leave the apartment. But she couldn't miss lighting a candle at the church every day for my grandmother, who had just died back in Sicily. So she had me go all the way over to Holy Cross every day after school to light one for her. Problem was, I had to run through a big mick neighborhood to get there and back. And every day, there's Sean, chasin' after me, callin' me names with all of his little shanty Irish buddies from the corner.

“So one day, I'm just fed up, and I stop runnin'. They catch up to me in an alley, and me and Sean have it out. It's just me you know, and him with all his dirty mick friends, but we fight one on one, fair fight all the way.”

“How honorable of you,” Charybdis interjected. Vince ignored him, since the sarcasm was lost on him anyway.

“Funny, I remember that no matter how hard I hit him, he just kept comin' back at me, and damn if he didn't hit hard for a little twelve-year-old potato-eater. Crazy thing is, he was smilin' through the whole thing. I'd whack him as hard as I could, and he'd shake it off, laugh, and then wallop me right back.

“This goes on for almost an hour. Finally, I'm dead tired. I catch him off-guard. I get him once in the gut, and while he's doubled over, I crank him across the jaw. He goes down in a heap.

“That's when his buddies jump in. Three or four of them, all older and bigger than me. One gets me wrapped up with a chain, right around my neck, and another's got a broken bottle. They're passin' some swill around, laughin' as they try to decide how they're gonna mess me up. I'm chokin', I can hardly breathe, and they're about to cut me.

“That's when Sean got up. I'll tell you, I still don't know why he did it, but I never much cared. In about a minute he had all of those micks off of me, and Sean told me to get lost. I didn't waste any time.”

“Interesting story,” Charybdis said.

“Yeah, but there's more. The next day, Sean comes down my street. Anybody else, any other time, and me
and my paisans would a killed him. But I owed him in a funny sort of way, and I let him talk. He actually apologized for his friends, and told me that he always fought fair and that if I wanted to take a free shot at him, that was okay by him.”

“And?”

“And we've been friends ever since.”

“So you didn't take a shot at him?”

“Of course I did. But like I said before, that little mick was so tough, nothing could ever really hurt him.

“We were buddies for years after that, he even introduced me to the girl I ended up marrying.”

“Margaret.”

The fact that Charybdis knew her name snapped Vince right out of his nostalgic funk. A slap of cold water right in the face.

“How did you know that?” he demanded.

Charybdis sensed his discomfort. She tried to calm him.

“Lucifer told me, in Prague. He said that was why he left.”

“Yeah. I bet he did. But now he's back, isn't he? And now he's got Maggie all to himself, finally.”

Charybdis looked up. She saw Argus gesture toward her from the altar. Politely, she excused herself from Vince's company, dazed though it was, and made her way to the ancient one's side.

“I would allow you more time, but we haven't the luxury,” Argus said. “What were you able to learn?”