Solomon's Grave (8 page)

He had stood within that musty, claustrophobic crypt only once, but he had felt, almost
tasted
, the power emanating all around him. His skin had crawled with goose bumps, the air vibrating into his bones. It was enough of a demonstration to prove that his charge was the genuine article. Not so much the vessel itself, but what it contained. Enough to keep him almost thirty years above ground protecting them from a millennia-old group of demon worshippers who still, on occasion, referred to themselves as Ammonites.

Only priests could move it to a new location. Men and women ordained by God.
Baptist ministers, for example.

Peter Quinn had made a point to mention Reverend Hayden’s departure. The man’s tone implied that Vincent should have known the date. Again the words
leaving town
struck him as significant. Vincent had focused on Dinneck; his arrival coinciding so well with the sense of doom pervading every corner of his own life. The young man had a sudden and apparent interest in John Solomon’s grave, or at least the statues. His arrival in town may have, in fact, meant nothing. What was significant was the departure of Ralph Hayden.

It didn’t
feel
like the right explanation, but logic pointed there. Not that logic always played a part in the Lord’s plan. Only truth.

Regardless, the time may well be at hand. He would make his entries, right away, then pray on them. He needed to be sure, certain in every respect. When the time came, it would be made clear to him. Until then, there was not much he could do but wait.

Chapter Thirteen

The soup was hot, but its burn sharpened his senses. Nathan took three spoonfuls before looking up to face Pastor Hayden. The old man sat at the far end of the small kitchen table, leaning back in his chair. Beverly Dinneck sat in another, her hands trembling as if to catch Nathan’s spoon arm should it suddenly drop.

“Feeling a little better, Reverend?” Hayden asked. Nathan tried to find a hint of anger or frustration in his voice, but heard only concern.

He nodded, and took another spoonful of soup. He cleared his throat a moment later, when he realized the others were waiting for him to say something.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Beverly grabbed his arm. Small drops of soup spilled back into the bowl. “Don’t you dare apologize, Nathan. You were exhausted. Mrs. Stanton said so. That is, after she calmed her boys down.” She smiled, though it was a sad expression. “You gave them a scare.”

“Gave us all a scare,” Hayden said. “We thought we’d lost our new pastor after only one day.” He leaned forward in the chair. “Have you been sleeping well?”

Nathan shrugged. “I think so. I’d been having some vivid nightmares lately, but I wrote them off to nerves. In fact, I’ve had only one since arriving here. Except… well, nothing. Felt like I was dreaming at the reception before I... fainted.”

Hayden nodded and thought for a moment, the wrinkles in his face twisting. “Well, the EMTs said that you were fine. It looked like simple exhaustion, so there’s a good chance you
were
dreaming just then. Passed out on your feet.”

Nathan grimaced in embarrassment and tried to hide it behind another spoonful. He’d awoken, vaguely, soon after blacking out. Those moments—
were they hours or minutes?
he wondered now—were a mix of images and unreality. As if waking from a dream but not quite coming all the way to the surface. By the time the EMT began packing up his bag, Nathan had begun to feel better, but allowed his mother to lead him to the bed Hayden had pulled out from the upstairs couch. He’d slept the rest of the afternoon away. Nathan visibly cringed every time he wondered what the rest of the reception was like.

“Do I really need to go in for tests? I’m feeling a lot better, physically at least. I just needed to rest.”

The older man shrugged. “Your call. They wanted you to get tested for epilepsy, tumors...” He waved his hand across the table as a way of finishing the sentence.

Beverly gasped. Nathan winced at the pain of her grip on his arm. Hayden smiled. “I have a very strong feeling it is none of those. As it is, I agree with Nate. I assume you slaved all night on that sermon, Reverend? It was a good one, by the way.”

“Thanks.” He appreciated the change in subject. After another spoonful of soup—some chicken noodle left over from the botched fellowship dinner—he added, “Yeah, I was up pretty late.”

“That’s what I thought. I hate the dentist. Get all nerved up before going in. He makes me sit there for five minutes before I get out of the chair. Says patients like me get so worked up that when the appointment is finally over, they collapse in relieved exhaustion when they try to stand.” He looked at Nathan’s mother and pointed at his yellowed teeth. “Have I mentioned, Bev, that these are all the originals?”

Beverly allowed herself a relieved smile.

Nathan put the spoon down with a clink. He looked up pleadingly. “Even so, I’m afraid I made a pretty poor impression. New pastor collapses after his first service.”

Hayden nodded. “I won’t lie and say that’s not true. At least you have something to start next week’s sermon with.”

Nathan nodded. The man was never one to sugar-coat things. He remembered something that had bothered him since Hayden suggested he lead this morning’s service. “I assumed you would want to be lead minister next week, Pastor, seeing as it’s your last.”

Hayden looked down for a moment, then said, “Yes, well, I suppose I should, shouldn’t I?” He slapped his legs and slowly rose from the table. “I’d better start working on the sermon soon, then, so I’m not wearing myself out with worry the night before.” He looked sideways at Nathan, a half smile implying the comment was only
half
in jest. “But you will handle the announcements at the start of the service, and can say what you wish about the events of this morning.”

“I’d like that; thanks.” He didn’t like it, would rather visit Hayden’s dentist than face anyone after today.

His mother insisted he go back to bed. It was dark outside. He tried to calculate exactly how long he had actually slept since being brought upstairs. It was almost eight o’clock now and the sun was down. Hayden would be going to bed soon. Part of Nathan wanted to stay up, drive to the cemetery as he’d planned, but his body refused to cooperate. His mother busied herself downstairs straightening the kitchen and washing the few dishes while he changed, then came upstairs to make sure he was actually going to bed.

“Mom,” he said, already feeling sleep overtake him.

She stopped at the top of the stairs and turned around. “Yes?”

“How’s Dad?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he home?”

She looked away, down the hall, as if searching for his father. “No, probably not. But today’s Sunday and he still has work tomorrow. He won’t be out too late. You get some sleep, and don’t worry about him.”

She looked back, and saw that her son was already asleep. She turned off the light.

Chapter Fourteen

The rain began near midnight. It slashed against the narrow, painted-over windows of the storefront’s back room. Peter Quinn knelt before the altar—an area on the floor designated by flickering black and red candles. In the center stood a cross-legged statue of a man with the head of a bull. Its bronze skin shone in the firelight. A steady stream of aromatic smoke issued from its open mouth and through small holes at the end of long tapered horns. Human-shaped hands reached palm-up, as if waiting for an offering.

Long ago, the statue would have risen twenty feet into the air, the hands large enough to hold its squirming, sometimes screaming, sacrifice. Like this small representation before him, the idol’s body would be hollow and the furnace within would illuminate the open mouth like the entrance to hell itself. When the offering was placed in its palms, the arms would rise on gears and pulleys, dropping the child into its mouth to feed the dark god’s hunger.

Quinn’s resources, and his required discretion, prevented him from establishing a true temple for Molech, but soon he would have enough power to build a massive sacrificial statue wherever he desired.

Then the
true
sacrifices to his dark god would resume. Sacrifices to his master, the most powerful of demons, had always been—always
would
be—the first born of a chosen follower. Quinn thought of the report given to him by Paulson this afternoon, the incident with Dinneck’s son, the weak minister. His first day of official service, he had fainted like a schoolgirl.

He smiled.
The good are weak
, he thought. If a sacrifice would soon be needed, he wondered if he could make Art give up
his
first born. A
Baptist minister
as an offering. That sounded delightful. Its body bathed in candlelight, the small statue seemed to smile back in agreement.

All in all, it had been a productive day. Until this morning, Quinn had some doubts as to Vincent Tarretti’s role in this grand game of hide-and-seek. The caretaker played his cards very close to his chest. No amount of research into his life turned up much more than the obvious fact that Tarretti was an eternally dull man. But Quinn saw the fear in his eyes when he suggested his group lay those flowers down. Any lingering doubt that he was involved in some way, dissipated during the conversation.

Still, Peter had to remain cautious. The Elders would be reading his weekly reports with a deserved grain of salt. They would not stand for another Chicago incident. He would not survive another blunder. His uncle would make certain of that.

Peter had stopped at Greenwood Street Cemetery before visiting Tarretti. He’d wandered among the grave markers, moving circuitously deeper and deeper into the far section of the old graveyard. It was his third visit. He stared for a long time at the angels standing guard over the grave’s placard. The name Solomon so clearly engraved. As before, the elation had filled him, nearly causing Quinn to fall to the ground and dig with his bare hands.

He did not. If he was as close to the prize as he suspected, he needed to be careful. Instead, he walked around, moving leaves and dirt with the toe of his shoe, always kicking them randomly back into place so as not to reveal someone had been there. It
was
a crypt, no question. Crypts were used to store things, though usually just bodies. Peter was certain no human lay inside. It had been so long, for him and those who came before. Including his own uncle.

They
were not destined, it seemed, for the great discovery. Only him.

Long ago, a young Peter Quinn had been slowly, methodically, taught the ways of the sect by his dear Uncle Roger, beginning as early as the boy’s tenth birthday. Peter’s internship into this holiest of priesthoods began with casual questions, odd remarks made at family gatherings at the Quinns’ home in Indiana. Comments designed to pique the boy’s interest in the unknown, in the darker side of the world outside Muncie. Uncle Roger was a large man, tall and nearly as wide. When he spoke, his voice came from somewhere deep in his belly.

When the man suddenly packed up the studio apartment he maintained two blocks from his brother’s family, and prepared to move to Chicago, he invited his twelve-year-old nephew to join him. Peter’s parents refused, wanting him in school and not trusting Roger to be strict enough with the boy. Max Quinn was a distracted man, working long hours in the tool shop and bringing home too few dollars to show for it. He made no bones about the odds of his son ever being able to go to college. But a high school diploma was one thing he
could
offer him, something he himself never earned. The night Uncle Roger left Muncie Indiana forever, he came to the house and had a quiet whispering conversation with his brother and sister-in-law. Peter waited anxiously in his room, already packed.

Max and Abby Quinn were sitting on the couch watching television when Roger called Peter’s name and said it was time to leave. His parents looked up sleepily when Roger waved his nephew toward the door. “No need to say goodbye, Peter. Your mother and father are too immersed in their show. They have, however, agreed to let you come with me.” The last he saw of his parents was the slow turning of heads, in perfect unison, back toward the television set. It was then that Peter Quinn had the first true glance at his uncle’s power. Over the next ten years, the man phoned Peter’s parents often, lying about a school his nephew never attended, each time lowering his voice to a whisper before hanging up.

Peter Quinn learned everything about his uncle’s true mission in life. His, and others’. Dozens, perhaps hundreds—their numbers known only to a few—of disciples like himself scattered across the globe, servants of Molech. They were modern Ammonites, an association reflected only in the dark god they served rather than any lifestyle. They were bloodhounds. Sniffing, searching. Always cautious. Funding their covert activities through other, more conventional means, including an extensive drug cartel and occasional prostitution ring. The Quinns’ specific line of business was mostly a respectable one, loan collections and money laundering. Any occasional drug-running was done only as a cooperative effort with the many pre-established channels in the city.

Uncle Roger and his people preferred to keep low profiles. Waiting for the day that their adversaries, who hoarded the prize like frightened children, made a mistake.

The general consensus among the worldwide Ammonite movement was that these zealots were well-organized, both Christians and Jews, able to communicate quickly and discreetly among themselves. Peter Quinn’s people were patient. The prize was rightfully theirs. To appease his many wives, old King Solomon himself pledged servitude to their gods, to the point of building temples to them. Most of these other gods were weak, at times nothing more than cheap clay monuments. But Molech—when one declares devotion to the master, he does so
forever
. As such, the king had given up any rights to property. All was to be offered to the master. Among all the treasures of that ancient age, there was one they desired most. The Ark of the Covenant. Its mere presence offered the power to destroy any enemy. There were other reasons, as well, why the relic was so precious, reasons which Peter didn’t think warranted too much consideration. Echoes of a superstitious time, best put behind them if they were to focus on the present. Talk of it being an actual
gateway
into Heaven, a door through which the very
God of the Israelites
would move when he deemed to do so. And like any door, it could swing both ways. Ludicrous, in Peter’s opinion, but a concept that served to drive his predecessors with more force than the obvious wealth such a possession would promise.