City of Shadows Read online

The shadow recoiled with the punch, sliding back onto the wall.

  I jabbed a finger in the shadow’s direction. “In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, in the name of Yahweh, Creator of all, I order you back to Hell.”

  The shadow froze for a moment … then it threw back its head and laughed. It laughed as it slid away and faded back into the rest of the darkness.

  Before I could even utter a thank you to God for once more saving my ass, I was hit with a rotten, decaying smell.

  And since I had turned off that particular charism, that meant that this was something that anyone in the hotel could smell this.

  Which means that whatever this is, is still here. I just dealt with a small part of it…But then again, I smelled evil over the whole city at 20,000 feet…

  It took me a beat to consider that it wasn’t my room. It wasn’t even the hotel.

  It was the entire city.

  And they were focusing on me, then, in that room.

  The room shook. I grabbed my suitcase and hurled it out into the hallway. Then I dove out the door after it and rolled.

  …The hallway was dead silent except for the thunderous beating of my heart.

  I took my suitcase and went straight down into the lobby. I immediately grabbed the nearest pay phone and called Father Pearson.

  “Get me the Hell out of this death trap,” I told him. “And start sharpening your combat exorcism skills—you’re going to need them.”

  9

  Being Reasonable

  Father Pearson didn’t send a cab for me. Pearson came himself, with a deacon driving the car. A second car pulled up behind him. They were men in black with a military bearing and swarmed into the lobby. They moved past me and didn’t even glance my way. Father Pearson came up to me, grabbed my suitcase, and calmly said, “Come along.”

  We were loaded into the car and pulled away in under a minute.

  As we pulled away from the curb, another car came up and replaced us. It was a police car. Aaron Shaw and a squad of cops swept out onto the sidewalk. As we sped away, more police cars swarmed the area.

  “Well!” Pearson said, chipper, “that was a fortuitous bit of timing.”

  I looked at him like he was insane. Then again, going by his job title, after battling the first few possessed, I’d be lucky to hold on to whatever marbles I had. Not to mention that he wasn’t the one who had nearly just been devoured by living darkness.

  Though the idea that Shaw had just happened to show up after I had nearly been attacked was a strange coincidence. Normally, I would think that Shaw had something to do with demonic forces… though that could have taken the form of anything from actual demons to political considerations. Either way, Shaw was guided by the forces of darkness.

  Along the way, I talked, and Pearson listened. His bright and cheery attitude faded as I went along. Though he did approve of me punching a shadow entity in the face.

  “I won’t say that the entire city is infested with demons,” Pearson finally concluded when I was finished. He slid back in the seat, his hands folded together. “Because I don’t want to jump to conclusions. However, I will say that it’s demonic in nature. Whatever it is. You may have severed a limb from the beast. Or they’re minor demons and part of a larger problem. Either way, this will be annoying.”

  “That’s one word for it.”

  We made it to the rectory of Westminster Cathedral. Pearson immediately led me to his rooms in the rectory. He moved away for a moment and let me be while he set up a room for me.

  I looked around the cell. Pearson’s chambers were heavy with books. Books on shelves that went up to the ceiling. The books were from various of authors. Everyone from Knock and Chesterton to John C. Wright, Declan Finn, and L. Jagi Lamplighter. Other titles included The Rite and Tales of an Exorcist. I grabbed a novel off the shelf and flipped some pages. Strangely enough, Pearson had annotated a vampire novel with comments like “This might work” or even “What does he know and who told him?”

  I frowned, put it back, and didn’t think that I was going to look at any of the other novels. I preferred my fiction to remain fiction…Though given the life I’d had up to that point, there was no real way to tell the difference. Between the vampire mercenaries, the flaming Balrog drone, the Voodoo Bokor and the warlock mayor, the only difference between my life and an urban fantasy novel seemed to be the decided lack of bisexual group sex with were-furries. I noted that those books were unsurprisingly lacking from this collection.

  Pearson came back twenty minutes later. I was thirty pages into War Demons from a small publisher called Silver Empire. (The annotations in that one included lines like “Look up the demon type” and “Confirm OpSec.”)

  “Your rooms are made up,” Pearson told me.

  I nodded. “Oh, thank you.” I raised the book and showed it to him. “Your marginalia are interesting.”

  Pearson’s friendly smile dropped. He reached over and took it out of my hand. “We have other editions that are less marked up.”

  I was surprised. The demeanor shift was sudden. “Too many secrets revealed?”

  “No comment,” Pearson said flatly. “Now, your room’s ready.”

  The moment I entered the cell, I dialed home.

  “Hello?” Jeremy answered.

  My entire body sagged. “Hey, kiddo. How are you?”

  “Awesome! Did you call earlier? Mommy said we got a call with nothing but static.”

  I smiled broadly. Not only had the demonic forces that work manipulated the conversation, they didn’t even have any of Mariel’s words to edit. “Yeah. That was me. Can she talk?”

  “Of course, I can,” she came on. “How are you, Tommy?”

  I smiled as I sat down on the bed with a thud. “I’m … fine.”

  “What’s wrong, Tommy?”

  I forced a smile so she could hear it. “Nothing. Not anymore. Could you… just talk to me? I miss the sound of your voice.”

  Mariel laughed. “Tommy. You haven’t even been gone a week.”

  “Humor me.”

  She talked. I listened.

  My sleep that night was fitful. No surprise. I didn’t need horrific visions to chase me in my nightmares. I had lived through too many of them. The shadows that had come after me had inspired bad dreams of Mayor Hoynes sending shadows after me.

  I made it to morning mass at six. I rolled out of bed and into mass. It was a peaceful time, and it relaxed the anxieties of the night before. I was also fully dressed in suit and shirt, overcoat, and left the tie in my suitcase.

  After mass, I strolled out of the cathedral and hoped to get a few minutes of air before breakfast. I considered stopping in the McDonald’s on the corner, but it struck me as moronic to eat something abroad that I could have anywhere back home.

  However, before I could get anywhere, Dame Polly Toynbee and Lord Newby Fowler were waiting for me.

  The two aristocrats stood outside the front doors looking disdainfully at the congregation as they walked past. Fowler was in full undertaker dress—black suit, tie, white shirt—carrying an umbrella and wearing a bowler hat. Dame Toynbee was in dark purple, hanging on his left arm, along with his umbrella.

  Lord Fowler smiled broadly. “Good morning, Officer Nolan! Might we interest you in a walk around the block? We wanted to see how you were doing this morning, and we missed you at your hotel.”

  Fowler offered me his hand. I took it cautiously. I generally disliked the feeling that came off these two. They felt like living store mannequins—perfectly and unnaturally poised like they were a window display set that had come to life. I couldn’t tell if that was the natural artifice that came with their station and upbringing, or public relations, or if they were concealing something. Either way, it didn’t fit comfortably with the blunt, straightforward people I genuinely dealt with.

  Hell. Even the mayor and the WHC were gracious enough to show their disdain for me before they tried to murder me.

  “I hav
e no complaints,” I told him. And I didn’t. Complaining about my job was counterproductive.

  Fowler slowly tilted his head. “Indeed? I think you’re being disingenuous with us, Officer. You changed hotels. Surely there was something to complain about.”

  I shrugged. He had a point that I didn’t think about. I had been so busy blotting last night out of my brain, I had problems thinking about the hotel as having a problem… that was like complaining that a house was a little drafty in the middle of a hurricane.

  I gestured to the cathedral. “This was more convenient. Closer to my assistant, and it’s easier for me to get to mass in the morning.”

  Fowler and Toynbee exchanged a sudden concerned glance between them. Fowler gestured behind him so we could start walking away from the cathedral. He did it in such a conspiratorial manner that it was like he thought the cathedral could overhear his conversation.

  “We didn’t want to bring this up the other day,” Fowler began, “but we are concerned about your assigned researcher in this manner.”

  I arched a brow. “Really?”

  “Indeed,” Dame Toynbee said. “Oh, dear me, and is it really safe being in this Church? Jesuits can be so very sinister, you know.”

  We walked along for three paces before I could answer, “Actually, I think he’s Opus Dei.”

  Fowler laughed. It was a rich, clear sound. “Doesn’t that even make it worse? All those radicals. It can’t be healthy.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. Ever since those stupid anti-Christian propaganda novels masquerading as thrillers were forced down the throat of the public, I’d heard all sorts of odd and ignorant conspiracy theories about my entire faith.

  “Opus Dei is actually a lay movement,” I explained calmly. “Maybe 2% of the entire organization is ordained.”

  Fowler rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. The entire organization is freakish and unreal. After all, no sex before marriage? Restraining sexual urges? Everyone has sex. It’s unnatural to show that sort of restraint.”

  I didn’t feel like explaining to them that I made certain to keep it zipped until Mariel and I were married. I also didn’t see what the point of the conversation was. Had they come to ask after me, dig for information, or lecture me?

  “You’d be surprised,” I said neutrally. I found it usually worked to keep my mouth shut. Some people had problems with silence and rushed to fill the vacuum with sound.

  “Oh please. Look at all those rubes stumbling around in their superstitious fog. I can tell you're not like them, Nolan. You can handle the truth. That nothing exists apart from physical matter and energy? We all know that there’s no God, right? Going to mass must just be good cover while you’re working with a priest.”

  Fowler said it so jovially, I could only conclude that he believed it. I was tempted to tell him my brother was a priest, just to see what his reaction would be like, but that would be mean. Entertaining, but mean. The last time I heard someone so self-righteous about there being nothing out there was when I had run into the most evangelical faith I knew.

  “I presume you’re both atheists?” I asked.

  Fowler laughed. “Of course we are. We are educated, after all.”

  Toynbee smiled at me and added, “It is so nice to find another educated man. They’re the only ones to talk to. Better than workmen. They seem to all think that news is all propaganda and skips the leading articles. A workman buys a paper for football results and little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in flats.”

  Fowler shook his head and sighed. “True. They are a problem. We will have to recondition him eventually. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe whatever the papers print, after all.”

  I nodded slowly. The bad vibrations I got off of them now could have vibrated me right out of my shoes. “I presume you own one or two of them.”

  “Of course. It’s the only way to get the good word out to the great heart of the British public. It’s the only way to make it hear what we want. Like the re-education of the maladjusted, or getting the dear little kiddies free education in experimental schools.”

  I made the mistake of asking, “Is that for everyone or specific kids?”

  “Oh, just the religious,” Toynbee chirped.

  Fowler nodded. “We have to get rid of the detritus somehow.”

  Toynbee smiled broadly. “Personally, I think we’re very close to making religious households deemed as abusive to children.”

  I nodded very slowly, like I would with any emotionally disturbed person holding me at knifepoint. “Indeed. I hope it all ends well,” I said, meaning that I hoped they had a strong and sudden conversation with the cosmic baseball bat that was once used on the road to Damascus. “Good luck with the Imams,” I said sarcastically. “Kozbar especially.”

  I could only imagine what Kozbar would do with Fowler and Toynbee. I had only asked a few questions and nearly received a beating. Declare faith abusive? I’d expect a war first.

  Fowler dismissed my concern with a wave of his hand. “Oh, Islam isn’t the problem. Christians are far more insidious.”

  I missed a step and nearly stumbled at that outlandish statement. “Then you should tell the head of the Church of England. That is still the King, isn’t it?”

  Fowler gave me a pitying look. “Really, now? That isn’t Christianity. It’s pragmatic.”

  I nodded slowly, letting him think I believed his point. The more cynical (cough, Thomas Hobbes, cough) have suggested that the Anglican church was a great idea to keep around, because the idea of God in Heaven was worth more than a police officer on every corner. Then again, that also required the belief that humans were so lousy that the world would turn into Lord of the Flies if there wasn’t the boogeyman called God in the cosmic closet. I have made too many close acquaintances among the prison population to believe that.

  But right now, I needed the hell away from these two. Frankly, I had conversations that made more sense with my late friend Erin, who was a pagan. At least with her, we could agree that there was more to life than what we could see.

  “Is atheism your main cause?” I asked.

  “In our spare time,” Toynbee answered.

  Fowler shrugged. “Though there’s so little free time, in between the newspaper, being the curators of the museum, and manufacturing and materials.”

  I nodded slowly and made it a point to look them up later. “Pardon me, but I should be getting back on the case of the Soul Stone. By the way, how did you find me?”

  Fowler smiled. “We called the rectory. They told us where to find you.”

  10

  Cui Bono?

  I got away from Lord Fowler and Dame Toynbee. It took everything I had not to break into a run and get away from their “reasonable” conversation. They wanted to talk to me about cosmology when we couldn’t even agree on the nature of the cosmos. It felt like talking to someone who needed tinfoil to keep out the radio signals.

  As I made it back to the cathedral, Father Pearson was already on the steps of the church, waiting for me. He was still in full vestments. He gave me a curious look, wondering where I was.

  “I was just paid a visit by Fowler and Toynbee.”

  Pearson clasped his hands together and rolled his eyes. “Ah! Yes! Did they decide to give you their standard ‘We know you’re one of the special ones’ routine?”

  “They’ve done this before?” I asked.

  He rolled his eyes. “Routinely. They’ve also bought into the idea that if you believe in evolution, you’re just one skip step away from becoming one of the enlightened ones.”

  I rolled my eyes this time. A little too hard. “Really? Enlightened ones? What? They think they’re the Illuminati?”

  “Actually, they call themselves the Brights,” he said dryly. “No, I’m not joking.”

  I sighed as I walked back into the church. “I didn’t
know it was as screwed up over here as it is back home.”

  “Maybe more,” he replied.

  Pearson led the way into the rectory. He went over to the hat rack with all of the hangers for the multiple parts of his vestments and started to dismantle his assortment. “What shall we do today? Go back to Whitechapel?”

  Even the casual calm, non-threatening way that Pearson said that made me shiver … mostly because of the history of the area. I had seen several brochures for the “Jack the Ripper Walking Tour.”

  I preferred the Vlad the Impaler walks in Transylvania.

  “It’s a bit of a tossup,” I answered him, thinking out loud. “Sure, we were attacked by Muslims, but why? Do we assume they’re working for Kozbar? There are seven thousand people in his parish. Do we assume that he’s so well informed that people can’t slip past him without him knowing? I wouldn’t. I don’t think my pastor could identify half the congregation by name. He probably can’t even recognize the other half by face.”

  Pearson hung up the green top piece of the vestments. He smoothed it down. “I wouldn’t place bets one way or another, to be honest. Just because he’s an Imam doesn’t necessarily make him evil.”

  I sat down while he changed. “Here’s another problem. What about the way the plan was pulled off? There are times where thugs aren’t the smartest people on the planet. But it seemed a little too obvious where we should be looking. Isn’t it? Is it just me?”

  Pearson shook his head with a thoughtful frown but was more focused on peeling off the second layer of his vestments than looking at me. “That works both ways. It could be a diversion from somebody else, someone who hired a few Whitechapel folks to distract from who organized it. Or it could be a way of keeping the police from investigating it—whether on orders from the mayor or out of a sense that they’ll be a riot if they investigated anyone within an arm swing of Kozbar.”

  I nodded slowly. “Or both.”

  Pearson sighed as he hung up the white cloth. “Exactly. It could be exactly what it appears to be and used to distract us. The question is, distract us from what?”