The Lucifer Messiah Read online

Sean did not seem the least bit moved by his host’s ire. Again, he replied simply.

  “I said thanks.”

  Vince made his way over to the front of the couch. A chuckle grew up in his belly. His look of sarcasm melted into a grin. He pulled a chair to the side of the couch, spun it around backward and sat himself down bow-legged.

  “I gotta hand it to you. You’re a piece of work. Man, is that really you? I still can’t square myself with it. Sean Mulcahy, on my goddamn couch. Bleeding like a stuck pig, no less.”

  “Sorry about that, old buddy.”

  “I’ll bet. I’d ask you where the hell you’ve been, but you don’t look like you’re in any shape to tell me a story.”

  “I know, long time, huh? I meant to write,” Sean managed, still wincing and still obviously in pain.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Mulcahy laughed and guzzled the last of the water. Vince ran his hands through his tangled black hair, that suspicious smile still spread across his face. Then, the young man breathed heavily, and passed out again.

  Vince grabbed a pack of Lucky Strikes from the floor, snapped a match and lit his last cigarette. He tossed the empty pack away blindly and reached for the phone on his bureau.

  He paused before picking up the receiver. Partly because he wasn’t sure if he remembered the number, and partly because he wasn’t sure he could make the call even if the digits came to him.

  The phone rang three times on the other end before a lady’s voice answered through a yawn. Vince’s eyes shut for a long moment. He swallowed hard before speaking.

  “Maggie? It’s Vince. Get outta bed, I got someone here who needs to see you … don’t ask, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  FOUR

  MIST CLOUDED THE EARLY MORNING, AND THERE WERE few people about on the streets of Lower Manhattan. A hard autumn frost had swept in over the night. Not many souls had chosen to brave the cold in the opening hours of a November day.

  Argus and Arachne moved through the dew-spotted fog slowly. They owned the empty sidewalk, a small frame beside a large one, a tiny hand held in the grasp of one much bigger.

  From the opposite direction, Irene Cahill, a woman of fifty-three years, approached the silent pair. A baker’s wife, she’d risen hours before the sun. For her, as it had been almost every day since her marriage, first light signaled her first break from the ovens.

  Kerchief tied hastily around her hair, and a wool shawl held about her arms, she breathed in the chill and strolled at a leisurely pace. It was quiet, as though the fog had smothered the normal rustles and shuffles of a New York morning.

  The mismatched pair was not at first visible, cloaked by the whitish haze. But soon enough they emerged, and she was able to discern their features.

  Arachne was the taller, still a girl really, with long blond hair that rested over her shoulders. From her unblemished face, silky white with lips of pink, Irene guessed her to be no more than eighteen. Her dress was mostly hidden by a long, black raincoat. To Irene’s eye she was likely married, judging by her companion.

  The boy Argus who bounded along beside her brought an immediate smile to Irene’s face. He was tiny, no more than four or five, a toddler really. But he was dressed in the smartest little suit, a shiny black tie set against an equally small white button-down shirt, all tucked behind an embroidered maroon vest. On his little torso and legs, he wore the most elegant matching pinstriped jacket and slacks. There was a white carnation that looked uncommonly huge pinned to his lapel.

  Just about the cutest thing Irene had ever seen, and she didn’t mind saying so, either.

  “What an adorable little one you have Miss!” she gushed as soon as she was within a few feet of them. “Why, he’s just like a teensy little doll, he’s so precious.”

  The young girl simply sighed. She did not respond, except to shrug as the baker’s wife knelt down before the youngster.

  “Well! Aren’t you just the cutest thing? What’s your name?” Irene asked in her best baby-talk voice.

  Argus, his chubby cheeks red from the cold, did not reply at once. As Irene busied herself fussing gently over his lapels, he trained his eyes directly at hers. Something about them, the uncommon hint of crimson in the pupils, maybe, was distinctly un-childlike.

  “I’ll thank you to refrain from fiddling with my jacket,” he said, in a voice colored by a weird, indeterminate accent.

  Irene’s hands dropped from the lapels. Her mouth and eyes widened.

  “As for my name, I doubt whether you’d seriously be interested in learning it were I not presented to you in such an unfortunately juvenile form.”

  Irene stammered. She glanced up at Arachne. A scowl greeted her.

  “Now, if you are quite finished admiring my tailor’s handiwork, expensive though it is, I’ll thank you to step aside, for we really must be on our way,” the strange child said.

  Irene, dumbfounded, did just as the boy requested. Without even a second glance, both he and Arachne continued walking.

  The mist soon reclaimed them from her sight.

  “Was that necessary? You could have humored her. She’d have been none the wiser,” the blonde asked her tiny companion.

  “My patience wears thin Arachne, and we’ve no time for distractions this morning. In any case, I’ll be free of this puerile coil soon enough,” the boy answered.

  “Not a moment too soon, I’d imagine,” she replied. “But it will be remembered, certainly. And I can always say that I tended to the wizened Argus when he was just a little child.”

  They both laughed, though he couldn’t help but frown as he did.

  The pair did not wander much longer through the hazy morning. As the early rush of traffic clogged the avenues with fumes and noise, they found their way to a quiet corner of the Lower East Side. On a dead-end street, set off from any main arteries, they came before a church. It was fairly nondescript, perhaps once notable for the four spires that bore a passing resemblance to the Cathedral of St. Patrick, much farther uptown.

  Not a person was about as they neared. Like familiar patrons, however, they unlatched the rusted iron-gate along the sidewalk, and ascended the front steps. The hinges very nearly screamed when they turned, as though the metal joints hadn’t been disturbed in years. Though the stained-glass windows of the gray façade were largely intact, it was clear from the boards nailed carelessly over the doors that the house of worship was no longer in regular use.

  The rest of the street seemed oddly removed from the neighborhood that encircled it. There were no residences, no offices, just a scattering of empty lots and some abandoned tenements. On the whole, as quiet and eerily serene as it was, it almost seemed as though the rest of the city had forgotten about it.

  Arachne did not withhold her impression. “What a gloomy place.”

  “Yes. Just as I remember it. Perfect I think, for our purposes,” the child Argus answered.

  “Charybdis should be inside already,” Arachne continued. “She said she had news.”

  Argus nodded. With a last glance at the boarded-up entrance, he motioned for his companion to follow him toward the cemetery set against the south wall. There was a cellar door beneath the distorted trunk of a maple tree that had grown too close to the building. He opened it with his tiny fingers and the two of them disappeared into the bowels beneath the church.

  Inside it was musty. The air hung heavy with stirred-up dust. They took a winding staircase up from the basement in total darkness, but found some light there to greet them in the expansive main hall.

  A woman called Charybdis stood waiting for them, at the center of the aisle between the pews, above a metal grate in the floor. She was black, with stern, West African features that looked to be aged about forty years. Standing almost at attention, her figure was obscured by a man’s flannel suit. Her hair was cropped down to the scalp.

  She did not greet the pair, and instead opened in a deadpan voice. “Lucifer has been found. He is here, in New
York.”

  Arachne paused when she heard it. She turned to look at her companion. He too stopped in his tracks. While she seemed suddenly out of breath, he looked almost relieved.

  “So the rumors are true?” Argus replied. “Are you certain of it, Charybdis?”

  “There can be no doubt,” the African woman answered. “Last night, the Keeper located and apprehended him. He fell into the Morrigan’s hands well after midnight, on the West Side, Eleventh Avenue and West Thirty-Eighth Street.”

  The words, though deeply spoken, seemed distant, dwarfed somehow by the vast emptiness that cradled them. The three figures came closer together beneath the ruined cathedral rafters. Finely crafted columns stood silent guard over them, charred black by a long-dead fire. A circle of candles provided both the only light and the only heat in the cavernous hold. Their breath condensed when they exhaled.

  “The neighborhood the locals call Hell’s Kitchen,” Arachne said. “If the Morrigan has him, he’s probably already dead.”

  “I would imagine,” Argus replied.

  “No. The Keeper did not succeed. I am told that Lucifer was held in check by only one of our kind. The rest of the agents were not of our ilk, conscripted by the Morrigan from the ranks of her unwitting indigenous associates.

  “Before he could be brought to face the queen, Lucifer killed his captor and escaped. He may have been wounded, but as far as I have been able to learn, the Keeper does not have him, and his whereabouts are now unknown,” Charybdis finished.

  “Who was the one of our own that he killed?” Arachne asked.

  “Caeneus.”

  “Caeneus? Wasn’t she killed in Spain, during the civil war?” Arachne asked.

  “The elder Caeneus, yes. The one who died last night was new to our fold, only brought into the circle three seasons past. He had just taken the name. Now it will sit vacant on the rolls once more,” Charybdis answered.

  As his associates continued the exchange, Argus wandered over to the back of the platform upon which they stood. A half-burned crucifix rested there, fallen from the place on the wall where it had once presided. He paced across the altar area, scanning the toppled offertory and the scorched Lenten vestments that lay beside it upon a carpet of soot.

  The others became quiet as the child paced.

  A fire just before Easter 1941 had ruined the once opulent cathedral. Tight budgets during the War had prevented the diocese from restoring it, and in the intervening years its parishioners had slowly filtered away to other neighborhoods. Thus did it remain abandoned, forgotten by all but a few parish bookkeepers and the locals who generally avoided its dark and unsafe confine.

  Argus knew all of that. He also knew that hardly anyone else shared the information.

  “This place will do just fine, I think,” he said, talking to the walls.

  “Fine for what?” Arachne asked.

  “We may have been given a rare opportunity, my friends. One that I had thought lost to us long ago. Lucifer must be found, but not by the Morrigan,” Argus replied.

  “Are you suggesting what I think?” Charybdis asked. “We haven’t spoken of that in ages.”

  “There will never be a chance such as this again. If we do not act now, we might have to wait for another hundred years, or longer,” Argus said.

  “But can it be done? If he is found, I mean?” Charybdis asked.

  “The hours are running short. We will make him understand this time. There is no other way,” Argus said.

  “Have we any idea where he might have gone?” Arachne asked.

  “We have some notions, but nothing concrete,” Charybdis answered. “The Morrigan brought us all to New York because of Lucifer, because of the rumors that his first life was spent here. It is likely that he will seek out family or friends now that he has returned, but we’ve little more to go on than that.”

  FIVE

  PAT FLANAGAN SNARLED. HIS EYES NARROWED. HE raised up his left hand in a fist.

  “That’s as far as you go, grease-ball. Didn’t you see the sign? NO DAGOS ALLOWED.”

  Vince snarled too. He lifted his chin in the direction of the Irishman’s knuckles.

  “Well, they let you in. So I figured the place was open to all sorts of lowlifes,” he answered.

  The red-haired man laughed, swelling and deflating his prodigious belly. His fist melted into an open hand, and he laid a rough pat on Vince’s shoulder.

  “How’s my favorite ex-partner? Haven’t seen you in a while,” he began.

  “Gettin’ along. Yourself?”

  Flanagan shrugged. He arched his back for a moment, rubbed his bulging gut through his ill-fitted shirt and burped. Then he answered.

  “Can’t complain. I mean I could, but who the hell’d listen? Not my wife, I’ll tell you that much.”

  Vince smiled. It was good to be in his old station house again. The faces had almost all changed in the seven years since he’d left the NYPD, but the place still had the same feel. Same ugly mold-green tile along the floors and the lower half of the walls; same dull black paint still peeling from the iron railings. It smelled the same, too. Badly.

  “Yeah, how is Mary?” he replied, halfheartedly.

  “She’ll be the death of me, that’s how she is. Many’s the day I wished I was rid of her.”

  Vince sighed. He inhaled and craned his neck. Right away, the other man knew what that meant.

  “Oh, hey ol’ buddy. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean nothin’. How is Maggie, you two talked lately?” Flanagan said, realizing that he’d touched on a sore spot.

  “A little. That’s why I’m here, to be honest.”

  “Anything I can do, you know that,” Flanagan said, gulping the last drop of his third cup of coffee.

  “What do you know about a shooting? Happened near here last night. Late, after midnight,” Vince asked.

  “Yeah, woke you up did it?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Turf war. At least that what’s we think.”

  “Whose turf?”

  Flanagan yanked his spotted tie a little looser, tugging on the sleeves of his rumpled coat. He walked toward the front of the precinct house, and the door.

  “Well, this is kind of on the hush-hush, if you know what I mean. The papers have an idea somethin’s happenin’, but we’re trying to keep a lid on it, at least until we know what’s goin’ on.”

  “Which is?” Vince asked as they stepped out of the station.

  Flanagan lit up a cigarette. He offered one to his old partner. Vince took a second to look at the brand. It was a Parliament. He politely declined.

  “Some kind of trouble inside Sam Calabrese’s crew. I wasn’t on last night, but I heard some talk this morning that they think the thing last night had somethin’ to do with his guys. Let me tell you, it’s gettin’ nasty out there Vince. Ain’t like when you and me walked the beat.”

  Flanagan sucked down a long, satisfying drag. He let the smoke slide slowly out of his lungs.

  “We picked up one stiff from last night’s fun and games. Guy had his face mutilated. We’re talking serious bodily damage. Eyes punched in, brains scrambled up like grade-A farm-fresh eggs and yanked out through his fuckin’ nose. I didn’t see the photos yet, but I heard it was so bad it even made some of the crime-scene guys puke.”

  Vince knew that his old partner was given slightly to the dramatic, so he quietly filed away what he imagined was probably an exaggerated description.

  “Who was it?” he asked.

  “We don’t know. New guy, nobody’d ever seen him before. That’s why we’re thinkin’ some new blood’s been movin’ in on Sammy’s action, and last night he sent a message.”

  Flanagan flicked the ash from the end of his cigarette with a shrug. Then he finished his thought.

  “All’s I can say is, I hope whoever was supposed to get it, got it. Cause this kinda shit gives me chest pains, you know?”

  The morning came and went, without Sean Mulcahy takin
g note of it at all. When he did stir, shortly before half past twelve, he found himself still laid out on the couch where Vince had set him down. Though his sight was clouded with the haze of slumber, he quickly saw that the debris and trash that had littered the floor the previous night were gone.

  Obviously, someone other than Vince had been there.

  An aroma next caught his attention, familiar, though long forgotten, and he wasn’t quite sure why he hadn’t sensed it immediately upon waking. It was the smell of soup. Chicken soup, he thought. For an instant, either from delirium or pure exhaustion, he let his nerves ease.

  The eye of his mind drifted over a forty-year-old memory.

  It was his mother’s kitchen. It was winter. And she was cooking. Irish mothers were hardly renowned as the best of cooks, but in that moment Sean thought fondly on the deep smell of boiling broth, and how the heat from the oven used to warm the whole of their tiny cold-water flat. But the soft moment was not long to last.

  His attention turned back suddenly, violently, to the present.

  There still was someone else in the apartment.

  He could hear breathing, and the click of shoes against the hardwood floor. From the sound of it, he knew it wasn’t Vince, too delicate, too measured in stride. Definitely human, though, or at least pretending to be. Though he couldn’t see from behind the couch, he could tell that the stranger was approaching. Under the quilt that covered him, he slowly raised his right hand. Though the pain in his side made it difficult, he concentrated. He felt his fingernails begin to grow, and to harden.

  As the unknown figure neared, footsteps softened by the living-room carpet, he gently twiddled his fingers. The tips of them were now solid, bony, and sharp like claws. When he moved them they tore at the fabric of the quilt, ripping four tiny holes where his hand had been.

  Once behind the couch, near enough for him to hear every rustle of whatever it wore, the stranger turned. Whoever it was, it was going to come at him from the front. He shifted, gripped the quilt to fling it off, and readied to strike. Just in case.

  The other stepped around. Sean turned, first glimpsing shoes, then a belt as his clawed hand swept out from under the covers. The blow was already in motion when he caught sight of a face. A female face. A familiar face.