CHAPTER NINE

“When I woke up this morning, I thought it was as bad as it could get,” Jericho murmured, staring at the two bodies on the ground. He felt used up, finished.

Then he remembered Chicago, and the anger embraced him like an old friend. Someone was going to pay for his partner’s life.

He noticed something moving near the Dumpster and turned, guns trained. It was Christine, rummaging on the ground for something.

“Come on,” he barked, suddenly alert. “We’ve got to move!”

She ignored him, hands scratching through the trash.

“Get up,” he urged, reaching for her arm. She pushed him away.

“Goddammit!” she grunted, frantically searching. Finally she found it.

It was a pill. Christine wiped away the muck and popped it into her mouth. She looked at him, eyes glazed with tears. “Mabel … she’s dead isn’t she?”

Jericho lifted her by the collar and held her sagging body against the wall.

“My best friend is dead,” he said with exaggerated patience. “Everyone is trying to kill us. I just shot two cops. Why are they after you? What the fuck is going on?”

“I don’t know,” Christine sobbed, her voice weak. “I swear I don’t know.”

Jericho let her go and she slumped against the wall. “You were gonna give me to them, weren’t you?” she asked accusingly.

He held out his arms and showed her two Glocks tucked in his wrist holsters. “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

Her eyes welled up with tears. “Why is this happening?” she moaned softly. “I know I’m responsible … I just don’t know why. What did I do?”

Jericho put his arm around her and tried to comfort her. “The man on the stairs…” he said gently. “What do you know about him?”

Her body stiffened. “I don’t know him.”

“You do,” he corrected. “I saw your face. You recognized him.”

Christine pulled away and tried to gather herself. “It’s something I don’t talk about.”

“It’s okay,” Jericho said softly, as if coaxing a frightened deer. “Just tell me.”

“I have seen him before,” Christine said, jaw clenched. She looked away. “In my dreams.”

“In your dreams?”

“Dreams … they’re nightmares…” She kept her face averted, and her voice shook. “I don’t know … He takes me … he … he … fucks me,” she blurted out, forcing the words with great effort. “I’ve been fucking him all my life.”

Christine turned, face streaked with tears. “I thought I was crazy. Maybe I am, I don’t know … He was never real … until tonight.”

“He is real,” Jericho assured her. “I saw him before. My firm was protecting him. I was his damned bodyguard.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be—I won’t let him harm you.”

She half smiled and shook her head. “I’m afraid of me,” she confided sadly. “I’m afraid if I see him … if he tries to take me…” Christine paused. “I’m afraid I’ll want him, too.”

A pair of headlights swept the alley. Jericho looked up and saw the flashing red and blue of a police car. He took Christine’s hand and pulled her into the shadows.

“They’re looking for us. Come on.”

Christine didn’t resist. “Where are we going?”

“To get some answers,” he muttered, almost to himself.

*   *   *

It seemed as if the entire city was in crisis. Sirens wailed constantly as Jericho and Christine emerged from a cab and approached St. John’s Church.

The great wooden doors were locked. Jericho pulled his Glock from its holster and hammered it against the door. Loud minutes later, the door opened a crack and Father Novak peered through steel-rimmed glasses.

Jericho pressed his Glock against Father Novak’s jaw.

The priest stepped back and opened the door. “You don’t need that,” Father Novak said calmly. “You have no enemies here.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Jericho said, ushering Christine inside. “This girl was attacked. She was about to be killed by Vatican Knights—priests like you—so don’t tell me we’re safe here.”

“They’re not like me,” Father Novak said flatly. “These men are a misguided clique who think they are doing God’s work. They are not.”

“I want to know what’s going on,” Jericho said with quiet menace. “And I want to know now.”

Father Novak met his stare. “Put the gun away. Did anybody see you come?”

Jericho holstered the Glock. “No.”

“Then we should be safe,” the priest said, leading them to the altar. “According to scriptures, he cannot see inside the house of God.”

Jericho and Christine exchanged glances. “Who can’t?” Jericho demanded.

Father Novak paused and peered at them over his steel-rimmed glasses. His expression was both curious and sympathetic. “Perhaps now you are ready to believe,” he said gently. “Come with me.”

The priest waved his hand as they went behind the altar rail. Jericho saw two young priests standing guard at the door. They moved aside as Father Novak entered the vestibule.

Looks like battle stations, Jericho noted as they passed. Might have to shoot our way out.

Jericho had visited the underground chamber before, but Christine wasn’t prepared for the feverish religious activity taking place. It looked like a medieval war room, with monks and priests working over scrolls, illuminated manuscripts, alchemist’s texts—and computers. Several scholarly monks were seated around a shriveled old crone, taping and translating the woman’s singsong babble.

When the old woman spotted Father Novak she clasped her hands together in prayer. Her parched, wrinkled features glistened with grateful tears as she opened her hands and lifted them.

Jericho squinted in disbelief. The deep, bloody wounds mutilating the old woman’s palms a few hours before had stopped bleeding. In fact, the wounds were completely gone.

“Her hands are healed.”

Father Novak nodded, dark eyes watching him intently. “Faith is very powerful.”

“Who is she?” Christine asked.

“A Polish peasant,” the priest said carefully. “Two weeks ago she entered a trance and—in a language she had never known—began to prophesize the End of Days.”

His last four words chimed in her brain like funeral bells. “The End of Days?” she repeated under her breath.

“The destruction of man—and the Unholy’s reign on earth.”

Jericho could feel Christine’s terror. “Why don’t you stop all the church talk and just tell us what’s going on?” he demanded, stepping between them. “Who’s after her?”

“Do you know the number of the beast?” Father Novak asked quietly. He picked up a sheet of paper. “From the revelation of St. John, from his dream?

“Six-six-six,” Christine recited.

Father Novak scrawled the numbers 666 on the paper. “In dreams, numbers appear backwards. The number of the beast is not six-six-six,” he explained somberly, turning the paper upside down. “It is nine-nine-nine!”

And I shot Kennedy, Christine thought. “What does this have to do with me?” she asked impatiently.

The priest picked up a bottle of water on the table and poured some into a bowl. “Holy water,” he told her. “Give me your hand.”

Hesitantly, Christine held out her hand. With great care, Father Novak pricked her finger with a pin, and squeezed a drop of her blood into the bowl. The moment her blood touched the holy water it began to churn and bubble.

“Cute trick,” Jericho scoffed.

Father Novak drew himself up. “You really think I’m performing tricks for you? Do you think that’s what this…” He swept his hand across the room filled with monks and scholars. “… Is all about?” He shook his head sadly. “You flatter yourself.”

Jericho had no rational answer. He watched the priest move to a desk and pick up a book. It was filled with drawings and symbols that were obviously satanic. Father Novak pointed to a symbol that was vaguely familiar. Jericho tried to recall where he had seen it before. Then it came to him. It was the sign that had drawn him to the book of heraldry.

A symbol shaped like a question mark. He’d also seen it someplace else …

“Regressus diaboli,” Father Novak intoned, reading the Latin text beneath the symbol. “The return of Satan. Does this seem familiar to you?”

Jericho stared at the symbol, then at Christine. Her eyes were wide with terror. Father Novak took her left wrist and pushed her sleeve up, revealing the red birthmark.

It was shaped exactly like the question mark symbol in the book.

“This is no trick, this is no game,” Father Novak declared. “He’s in her blood. She was chosen.”

“Chosen for what?” Christine asked helplessly, not wanting to know the answer.

“Every thousand years, on the eve of the millennium, the Dark Angel takes a human body and walks the earth. He comes for the woman who will bear his child.”

Father Novak glanced at Christine. “It must be in the unholy hour before midnight on New Year’s Eve. If he consummates your flesh with his human form, he will unlock the door to hell. All that we know, all that we are—or could be—will cease to exist.”

What insane bullshit, Jericho observed. “The Prince of Darkness wants to conquer earth, but he has to wait until between eleven and midnight on New Year’s Eve?” he asked scornfully.

Father Novak’s sharp features became steely. His voice was calm, but his jaw shook with anger. “It’s not New Year’s per se, but a momentary celestial alignment,” he said slowly, as if instructing a child. “The Gregorian monks studied the heavens and calculated the precise moment of this event. They created our calendar by mapping this event and counting backward from that moment.”

Jericho had heard too much. He took Christine’s hand. “It was a mistake to come here.”

“It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe…” Father Novak warned. “He is real. And he will not rest until he has found this girl.”

Christine pulled her hand free from Jericho. “Why did he pick me?” Her question suggested she believed the priest.

Father Novak shrugged. “You were born when the stars were right. A man’s body was also chosen … just like yours.”

“If the Devil does exist, then why doesn’t your God do anything?” Jericho challenged.

“He isn’t my God. He is our God.” Father Novak replied fervently. His glazed expression reminded Jericho of Thomas Aquinas in the subway tunnel. “God does not say He will save us,” the priest reminded. “He says we will save ourselves.”

“Save myself?” Christine snorted. “What am I supposed to do, get a restraining order? Sorry, Satan, but you have to stay five hundred feet away?”

“We must have faith,” the priest repeated. He opened a large, leather-bound manuscript. Inside were vivid illustrations of men through the ages, battling a great beast with a fiery sword. “According to the prophecies a protector will come—a righteous warrior—to keep the girl from harm.”

Medieval comic books, Jericho scoffed. Especially the fiery sword. “What amazes me is that anyone buys this fairy tale,” he declared flatly. “Here’s the Devil, with all his incredible power … and someone can just take him down with a flaming sword.”

Father Novak smiled. “You look with your eyes and you see a sword. I look with my heart and see faith.”

“Between faith and my Glock nine, I’ll take the Glock,” Jericho said, looking at Christine. He could sense she was wavering.

The priest’s smile faded. “I’m afraid nothing less than a pure heart can defeat pure evil,” he said regretfully. “You understand … you’ve done your job. You brought her to the people of faith who can protect her. We will hide her.”

“People of faith are trying to kill her,” Jericho reminded him. “How can you hide her?”

It was the priest’s turn to scoff. “Just don’t tell him. He’s not all-knowing. He’s not God…”

“I don’t know what’s going on here. I just know we have real problems,” Jericho said, looking at Christine. “This isn’t solving them.”

Christine looked from Jericho to Father Novak, then back. “This all feels true to me,” she told Jericho.

He shook his head helplessly. “You’ll be safer with me. At least I can fight this guy with something real.”

The priest smiled at Christine. “You know what to do. You feel it.”

She nodded and edged to Father Novak’s side.

Jericho regarded her sadly. Her choice, he told himself. I’m out of here. As he turned and walked to the stairs, Christine lifted her hand uncertainly.

“Let him go,” Father Novak murmured, taking her arm. “The true protector is a man of virtue, willing to sacrifice everything to keep you here.”

*   *   *

Everyone at the Vatican knew something momentous was happening. Very few had any idea what it was.

The pope had been in virtual seclusion for a week. He knew the only people he could trust were the monks of the knighthood. They were the keepers of the flame, and his best defense against the Dark Angel’s wiles.

He knew he had enemies among the cardinals and one, or more, might have defected to the lavish temptations of Satan. The pope knew that Cardinal Gubbio was an outspoken critic of his decision and had dispatched assassins. Treachery was everywhere.

For that reason the pope received his closest advisor in the sanctity and privacy of an obscure confessional, carved from a thick stone wall centuries before. No sound escaped from its heavy wood doors.

“The girl is found in New York City,” his advisor reported.

Although the Holy Father remained cloaked in semidarkness, his advisor was taken aback by the pontiff’s frail appearance. His Holiness had aged twenty years in the past few weeks.

The pope received the news with dread. “And the protector?”

“The protector has not come.”

Huddled in the darkness of the ancient confessional, the pope slumped against the cold stone wall. There was no way he could accept Cardinal Gubbio’s pitiless solution. It is not the way of God, he reflected. And it’s certainly not a solution. Merely an affirmation we have lost faith.

And yet, the consequences of inaction were unthinkable.

“Then we must become her eternal protector,” the pope declared wearily. “Send your most trusted knights.”

But he knew full well that if they failed, Christine York’s sacrificial blood would be on his soul.