The Scarlet Gospels (40 page)

“Poor children,” the reverend said. “Being tricked into believing you are born like that. The hardships you must have endured. But God always has purpose, my sons. However difficult it may be for us to understand it.”

“He does?” said Caz.

“Of course, child. Of course. Whatever sins you have committed, He invites you to lay them down and accept His forgiveness and His protection. Oh Glory to God in the highest—I see it so clearly now. This is why you're here! Thank You, Lord—”

“Here we go,” Harry said, a smile spreading across his face.

The reverend kept up the hard sell.

“Thanks be to the Lord for delivering you all into my care, so that I may save your souls!”

Now it was Caz who groaned.

“God never tests us beyond what we can bear!” the reverend continued. “I promise you, sure as I sit here before you, if you do not repent, you will never see the light of Heaven. But I can save you. There is still time, children! Do you wish to be saved from the flames of Hell?”

“There is no Hell,” Harry said. “Not anymore.”

“Oh, but there is,” the reverend replied. “I have had many visions of that place. I have witnessed its furnaces. I have counted its chimneys. I have watched damned sodomites like you.” He pointed at Caz. “And you”—now at Dale—“driven by demons whose faces were foul beyond words.”

“Scary,” Harry said.

“It is. And I swear by the blood of Christ, the Devil is in you—is in all of you—but in Christ's name, I can drive him out. I can—”

The reverend was interrupted by the sound of Harry laughing. “Jesus Christ. Ever hear the expression ‘know your audience'?” Harry said, the air in the limo growing thick. “I swear, on the soul of that dear woman sitting next to you, that we just came from the Hell you're describing. We followed a demon there to bring my friend back alive. We saw populations destroyed by a plague fog. We saw armies wiped out by magic workings. We saw the Devil himself dead, and then resurrected as he rode a gargantuan sea beast into the sky, where he cracked open the roof of Hell and brought the sky down on everyone's heads. We barely escaped with our lives. We're hungry, we're beaten, and we're in mourning. We don't have the patience for a sermon right now, Rev. So either shut the fuck up or get the fuck out, because this car is going to New York.”

“I-I-I,” the reverend stammered. “I-I … Driver!”

The reverend violently slapped at the glass partition that separated the driver from the rest of the vehicle.
“Driver!”

“Everything okay back there?” the driver called out.

“
No,
” Welsford said, his voice shrill. “Stop the car!”

The driver dutifully eased the vehicle over to the side of the empty highway and got out, slamming his door, and then walked the length of the vehicle to open the reverend's door. The driver bent low and peered into the limo. He found everyone sitting politely in their seats.

“What's the problem, Reverend?”

“These travelers are beyond hope! Destined for Hell and content to drag every living soul they encounter with them.”

“Of course they are,” said the driver, placating his boss. “So what, you want them out?”

“Yes!” screamed the reverend.

The driver threw the passengers a sympathetic look. “All right. The reverend says out, you're out.”

“We'll get out in New York,” Harry said.

“Don't get smart with me, guy. This here's the reverend's ride, and he's going to Prescott and then on to—I forget where the hell comes next. But New York is not on the list. So you need to find yourselves a different ride.”

“Or a different driver,” Caz said behind the driver's back. He had slipped out of the passenger side while the driver made his way to the back of the limo, and he had not emerged from Hell without his knife. He waved it at the driver, whose response was quick and unequivocal.

“Take the car. Just don't hurt me, okay? I got five kids. No wife but five fucking kids. You want to see? I got pictures.” He reached into his jacket.

“I'm sure you're an excellent breeder,” Caz said. “But I don't need pictures of the kids. I just need you to help the reverend out of the car.”

“Out?”

“Oh, he can stay, but I don't think he wants to ride all the way to New York with a car full of unrepentent sinners.”

The reverend didn't need Caz to repeat himself. He had the answer already in mind.

“Get me the fuck out of this car,” he said. “It's not going to New York. It's going to the lake of fire and I don't want to be riding in it when it gets there!” He stuck out his overly bejeweled fat-fingered hand. “Help me here, Jimmy, or Julius or whatever the fuck your name is.”

“Frederick.”

“Just get me the fuck out of this car.”

“Please don't take the Savior's name in vain, Reverend,” Caz said.

“Ah, fuck you,” the reverend said.

The reverend reached up and might have caught hold of the door if Caz hadn't found his hand first and, supplementing Frederick's strength, hauled all three hundred and seven pounds of Reverend Kutchaver up out of the considerable depression he'd made in the limo seat. Once they had the worst of the work done, Frederick let go of his half of the burden and Caz took the hint and did the same. The reverend loosed a shrill shout and went down on his hands and knees in the litter of the rock shards at the edge of the highway.

“Welsford, you idiot. Where are you? I fell down. Help me up or I swear to Christ I will fire you and make goddamn sure that no one will hire you if you live to be a hundred and fucking fifty.”

Welsford scrambled to help his beloved employer and preened over him like a sycophantic lover. The sight was enough to make Caz laugh out loud.

“What's so fucking funny?” the reverend demanded of Caz as Welsford fussed over him, brushing dirt from his suit with short little strokes of his hand.

“It's an inside joke,” Caz said. “Oh yeah, and I'll be needing everyone's phones, of course.”

Once all forms of communication had been confiscated, Caz climbed into the driver's seat, then rolled down the window and drove off, leaving the sanctimonious reverend and his staff in the Arizona dust.

“Caz,” Harry said as the car barreled down the length of highway.

“Yes, Harold?”

“God bless you.”

 

4

Lucifer lay under a great weight of shattered stone, his body so exquisitely knitted that it had remained whole beneath the fall of Hell's heavens. The voices that stirred him from his comatose state were not human; rather they spoke in the fluting voices of his own tribe of angels, though their debate (which he understood perfectly well despite the passage of centuries) was scarcely evidence that they were messengers of love.

“We should have been here to see this, Bathraiat. Somebody should have been keeping an eye on things and raised the alarm the moment the stone became unstable. I would have wanted a seat up front for this! Can you imagine the panic, and the screaming and the praying—”

“Demons don't pray, Thakii!”

“Of course they pray.”

“You really are a cretin, aren't you? Who the fuck would they pray
to
?”

“They had a leader. Some rebel. Shite! I don't remember his name. You know me and names. He was a dickhead and everybody says so. And old Bitch Tits kicked him down here. He started some rebellion.”

“Lucifer?”

“That's the one. Lucifer. They prayed to Lucifer.”

“Why?”

“Didn't he build this place?”

“So? Who cares?”

“I
care.”

“You
care
? About somebody other than yourself? What kind of shite is that?”

“I'm not saying I care as in ‘tears-and-lamentation' care. I care that the fuckwit who had this come to pass—and it's a big job—I'm saying whoever that selfish fuckwit was, he could have told a few friends and we all could have been sitting on the sidelines watching the slaughter like civilized creatures. Instead we were standing around doing nothing in a state of ignorance—”

“Shut up, will you?”

“I can do whatever—”

“Shut your mouth, brother, and open your eyes. Do you see what I see? There! Under that rock!”

At that, Lucifer drew a deep breath, and the massive stone that pressed down on his body loosed a single loud crack as it split from end to end.

“God. In. Heaven,” the one called Bathraiat said.

The two angels looked up at Lucifer. Their natures were not capable of shame. What could perfect beings such as they ever have to be ashamed of? But their instincts, however coarsened by lack of use they were, told them this was no ordinary demon.

“It's him,” Bathraiat said.

“But he looks so—”

“Shut up, brother,” Bathraiat hissed. “Be best if you kept your opinions to yourself.”

“You're not afraid of him, are you?”

“I said shut the mouth.”

“You know what? Fuck you,” Thakii said, and then turning to Lucifer, “and especially fuck you, Lucifer almighty. We were having a fine time till you showed up.”

Having spoken his mind, the angel started to turn away, but one word uttered by Lucifer—“Don't”—was enough to stop the angel in mid-motion.

“What?” said Thakii.

“You are numbered among the dead, angel,” Lucifer said.

“I am?” Thakii looked puzzled. Then smiled in blissful adoration and ceased.

The energies from which he had been nurtured, inheriting their willfulness and their lusts and their escalating confusions, immediately began to vacate his body and go in search of new pastures to seed. The light in the warm flesh of his muscles flickered out as all the strength in him perished. He curled in upon himself, his head becoming elongated and shrinking as he collapsed like a building set with charges. If there was any pain in his demise he let out no complaint.

The other angel, whose skin was subtly imprinted with what looked like eyes, delineated in red with black irises, blinked in acceptance.

“It is boring, day after day,” the creature said. “I get to feeling that anything is preferable to this.”

“Anything?”

“Yes,” the angel said, deliberately providing the executioner with his cue.

“Dead,” Lucifer said.

The other angel nodded and, curling in upon himself, was unmade twice as quickly.

Lucifer climbed up into the tallest pinnacle of sky-stone and did his best to assess his whereabouts. But it was by no means easy. The deluge of fractured stone had effectively flattened every last topographical detail that might have helped him to work out where he was and in which direction he had hope of making an unseen departure. He had no desire to find any others here. He simply wanted anonymity for a while, to sit in a quiet place and try to figure out what to do with the unwanted resurrection that had been gifted to him.

But first he needed to get up and out of Hell's wasteland without drawing any further attention to himself. The number of angelic presences here was growing; he saw them stepping down out of the darkness all around him, eager to witness the ruins of Hell. He took advantage of their morbidity—plotting a path of departure that would keep him away from the grisly sites that drew the angels' clammy attentions and instead took him away through narrow cracks between the heaped stones.

Once he'd put some distance between himself and the worst of it all, it was easy. He found a dead soldier in a robe that was large enough for him to envelop himself. He removed the soldier's clothing and wrapped it around his own body to keep the light in his flesh from attracting the gazes of the curious as he made his way up out of Hell and into the world of men.

 

5

D'Amour sat in darkness. Whatever the time, day or night, darkness. Being blind in Hell had seemed scarcely real, but once he got back into New York—back into his apartment and later his office—he began to comprehend how merciless the Hell Priest's final curse on him had been. Like everyone blessed with the gift of sight, he had taken it for granted. He had lived with his eyes. They made it possible for him to exist in the eternal present. As long as he could see ahead, he could at least attempt not to look back. Now he had to rely upon memory to find his way around his world, and memory took him out of the present and forced him to constantly cast his mind into the murky waters of the past. He had never been very good at it, but regardless, he wanted the now again.

With no reason to think there'd be an end to his curse, Harry decided to close the agency. It wasn't as though Harry needed the money anymore either. As soon as Caz and Harry were ruled out as suspects in Norma's death, the matters of her estate were settled. For a woman living in such humble circumstances, Norma had been quite well-off. Harry was surprised to find that she owned the building in which she lived, along with half the buildings in the vicinity, several gas stations, a handful of car dealerships, and an island off the coast of California. She'd left everything to Harry.

Still, even with his newfound wealth, the decision to close up shop was brutal on Harry, and Caz was his only lifeline to sanity. When the decision was finally made, they went to Harry's office together and ran through the jobs that had still been outstanding when they'd taken off in pursuit of Norma. There were a couple that Harry felt he'd virtually wrapped up and would be able to finish with Caz there to give him some help. But most of the jobs were simply not feasible in his blind state, and he made the calls to all the clients in question, explaining that he had met with an accident and was unable to finish the job he'd accepted. Where there were advanced fees, he promised to return them.

“It feels like I've died,” he said to Caz when he'd finished.