Four Dominions Page 3

  The cognitive dissonance set off an inward shudder, as if she were being buffeted by the shock wave from a distant explosion. And, once again, she felt splintered, as if she were watching her reflection in a mirror she herself had smashed. Her restored vision took in everything and nothing, invoking a fear that she was herself and not herself. Something behind that door stirred, uncoiling, a shadow without either substance or light.

  “Emma?”

  “What?” She blinked hard. “Yes?”

  Bravo peered at her with evident concern. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “Of course.” But she could not get herself to smile. What was stopping her? That fear again, the loudening drumbeat of panic.

  Bravo took a step toward her. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  “That was a year ago, my good brother.” She leaned forward, kissed him on the cheek. But as her lips touched his flesh, the cognitive dissonance inside her rose to a howl, a shriek so primitive, so hideous, that she felt bile rising up into her throat. She coughed, and swallowed it back down. Good Christ, she thought. What’s happening to me?

  Bravo, perceptive beyond mortal ken, peered hard into her eyes, and for a terrifying instant she was sure he saw the thing inside her, coiling and uncoiling. She knew what would be coming next, and she knew she could not withstand the force of his probing questions. She had never been able to do it, and now with this doubt and fear eating her soul she had no chance whatsoever.

  But at that moment, a dark providence stepped in to save her. They heard the sound of a voice calling to them, and Bravo turned from her. They saw a boy, sunburnt, thin as a weed, waving to them across the killing field of burnt corpses.

  “Hello there!” he cried. “Hello!”

  Bravo picked his way toward the boy. Emma, following on his heels, felt an immense sense of relief, gratitude, and disgust, which confused her mightily. Ever since she had caught sight of the ruined castle she’d been beset by a sense of déjà vu. If she had never been here before how was it that she knew the layout of the castle? How was it that she knew there had been a horse barn over there, that she knew the road off to their right led to a private helipad? Sweat broke out at the back of her neck; her armpits were wet. She swiped moisture off her upper lip. Her disgust combusted, nauseating her. She had read—with her own eyes!—that memory was a trickster, that it morphed in your own mind the way mercury moves, changing shape as it gathers and releases itself. And now, for the first time, she understood, for her own memory seemed maddeningly inconsistent—or, maybe more accurately, morphic, playing tricks on her. Like Malta, which she was certain she’d never been to, but nevertheless knew well. Like this castle, which rose in her mind in all its glory before she set fire to it. What? What! Her nausea threatened to double her over.

  The boy saved her. His name was Elias. He was eleven, he told them. He was dark haired, with a Greek nose, a winning smile. “I’m the only one in all of Malta brave enough to come here.”

  “Where do you live, Elias?” Bravo asked.

  “Here,” Elias said, his cornflower-blue eyes upturned into the sun, “among the ruins.”

  He was dressed in loose white cotton trousers and shirt, a pair of rope sandals on his sun-browned feet. Where would he get such spotless clothes in among these ash-crusted ruins? Bravo wondered.

  “You don’t seem surprised to see us,” Bravo said.

  “I was told you would come.”

  “Told?” Bravo frowned. “Who would know that?”

  Emma, crouching down, said, “Don’t you have a family?”

  “My father died in the fire,” Elias told her. “And my mother passed giving birth to me.”

  “What about your father?” Bravo said. “He was a Knight.”

  “I barely knew him,” Elias said. “But I knew this place before it burned down. I snuck in here sometimes when the Nauarchus wasn’t in residence.”

  Emma seemed not to have heard him. “No other family?”

  Elias just shrugged.

  Bravo bent down, lifted the crucifix Elias had strung around his neck with a thin strip of leather. It was bronze, weathered, patinaed, ancient looking. “Where did you get this, Elias?” he said softly.

  Bravo had stepped between Elias and Emma, blocking her view. She rose, moved to a different position. Her heart nearly froze in her breast. She felt as if she were asphyxiating. An excruciating pain, as if she were being branded by a fiery poker, radiated from the center of her forehead. Something deep in the recesses of her being shrieked like a demon out of Hell. Her eyes rolled up in her head and everything went black.

  *

  “WHAT HAPPENED?” Elias hunkered down beside Emma’s supine form. “Is she okay?”

  Bravo peered into his sister’s eyes as he gently lifted their lids. “I don’t know. She’s never been prone to passing out before.”

  “Something’s changed then.” Elias shifted uncomfortably. “Or maybe it’s this place.” He looked around nervously. “It’s especially creepy at night.”

  “What d’you mean?” Bravo asked without looking up.

  Elias had the habit of lifting only one shoulder when he shrugged. “I dunno.” When Bravo shot him a quick glance, he went on haltingly. “Well, for one thing I hear noises.”

  Bravo was trying to determine what he saw flickering in Emma’s pupils. “What sort of noises?”

  “Well, not a noise, exactly. A voice.”

  “Only one?”

  “Yes.” Elias licked his lips nervously. “It’s always the same voice—a man, a very old man.”

  Bravo’s attention was caught in a web. “How d’you know that?”

  “The voice is—I dunno—‘creaky’ I guess is the best word for it. Like wood crackling in a fire.”

  “What does the voice say?”

  “It speaks in a language I don’t know.”

  “Maybe it’s the wind,” Bravo said.

  “Huh! You haven’t been here long enough,” Elias said. “Nothing’s as it should be in and around this castle.” The odd shrug again. “Besides, I understand him. Like I knew you were coming.”

  “The voice told you?”

  “Not exactly. I heard it in my head—all at once, like.” He pointed. “What are you looking for?”

  “A clue to her current condition.”

  Which was true enough. But there was more to it than that. It seemed impossible, but Bravo thought he had caught sight of something anomalous in the centers of Emma’s pupils. Or perhaps not, for if he looked directly he saw nothing. But when he shifted his gaze so he was looking at them obliquely, a symbol, pale as moonlit bone, seemed to form and dissolve, each in the blink of an eye: a triangle inside a square inside a circle. Nihil. The sigil of the Unholy Trinity.

  Bravo gasped, rocking back on his haunches.

  “What is it?” Elias said, concern plastered across his face.

  Bravo did not know what to say. But then, ever since Fra Leoni, his mentor and guide in all things occult, had been killed, he hadn’t known what to say. His sorrow at the loss of Fra Leoni was so complete, ran so deep, that it was impossible to articulate it to anyone, even Emma. For months now, he had been drowning in it, unable to rid himself of his last sight of his mentor and friend. Their enemies had sliced off Fra Leoni’s head, placing it in a vitrine for Bravo to find when he returned to the library at Alexandria where the Order kept the relics of the four Apostles and Antiphon, Saint John’s eagle-companion. The ancient power of the Gnostic Observatines had been turned to piles of gray powder, the potency of the Reliquary destroyed utterly. Much as it might be tempting to assume so, Bravo knew that the Knights of St. Clement, the Order’s ancient enemies, were not responsible. No, the enemies who had lured Fra Leoni to Alexandria and killed him in the only way possible to kill someone with such extraordinary powers, by beheading him, were the Fallen, the hundred or so angels cast out of the celestial sphere along with Lucifer.

  Someone or something had opened the long-
sealed portal, allowing them access to the world of mortals. It had been long known that by the act of Transposition these Fallen Angels—demons—could inhabit a human being. Thus arose the need for the act of exorcism, which the Church believed could cast out the demon. But Bravo knew full well that exorcism as practiced in secret by the Church was too often ineffective. Worse, the Fallen could use Transposition to move from human host to human host, leaving a hollowed-out and desiccated husk behind. He himself had witnessed the Transposition of his friend’s wife, Maura, into one of the Fallen. And he had seen Maura’s used-up husk left behind. Where had the demon gone? Who was serving as its host now?

  Perhaps if he hadn’t been sunk so deeply in his grief he would have figured it out sooner, but then again maybe not. This was his beloved baby sister, who had suffered following the explosion that had killed their father, who had fought alongside him so bravely a year ago against the Fallen.

  But this wasn’t his sister lying in front of him. Her eyes snapped open, and he could clearly see in her pupils the sigil of the damned. It began to dawn on him too late. Her hand was already around his throat, choking the life out of him. Her strength was unbelievable, and when she spoke it was as if her voice was coming from some faraway demonic pit.

  “You had your chance against us,” the demon shrieked.

  At its first words, Elias stumbled backward and dragged himself clear.

  The demon paid him no mind. “But now that’s gone,” it howled. “We did away with your grandfather Conrad, our first obstacle. Then after long years of gathering ourselves we went after the second obstacle, Fra Leoni. Like your grandfather, he’s dead now. Now it’s your turn. We are in control now. Once you’re dead nothing will stand in the way of bringing our master back from his ages-long exile. Nothing will stop us from taking over this world.”

  As it uttered these words it was squeezing what life was left out of Bravo. He knew who was speaking, who was in control, but his eyes betrayed him. All he saw was Emma. How could he harm her? Even if he somehow managed to slither out of her grip, even if he managed to find an implement to slice off her head, killing the demon, he would be killing her as well. He couldn’t do it. He’d die first. And dying he was; there was no question about it.

  As if asphyxiation weren’t enough, the thing inside his sister started to beat him, first with her fist, and then, grasping an ash-covered block of fractured stone, began to use that, smashing it with a maniacal frenzy into his rib cage, his cheekbone, his shoulder.

  Bravo’s world was reduced to a valley of red pain. He couldn’t see or hear properly, and he couldn’t breathe. There was nothing left of him but a bloody pulp. The demon rose up, eyes blazing with icy light, lifted the blood-drenched stone over her head to deliver the killing blow to his forehead.

  At the apex of its arc, at the pinnacle of the triumph surging through its breast, there came the sound of wood cracking, as of a great tree falling—

  “Et ignis ibi est!” There will be fire!

  —that reverberated through the ruined castle and beyond, until it encompassed the entire plot of land. The voice froze the demon in control of Emma, but only for an instant. With a supreme effort, it commenced the downward arc of the killing blow.

  In that instant, Elias rushed at her and, as she looked up, burst into blue-white flame.

  3

  London: 1918

  WHEN TOBY, FRESH FACED AND FRECKLED, BROUGHT THE card to him on a silver tray, which was the custom in the waning days of the Antaeus Club, Conrad Shaw leapt out of the leather upholstered chair on which he had been lounging, meditating upon his next voyage east, now that the dreadful war had come to an end. “By all means, Toby, show him in at once. We mustn’t keep such a famous personage cooling his heels in the foyer!”

  The Antaeus Club was housed in an exceedingly handsome mansion in Belgravia, on Charles II Street, near St. James’s Square. It was guarded by a toothy wrought-iron fence and horned lamps reminiscent of dragons’ eyes. It had a rather checkered history. Originally named the Canonic Club, it had been formed in the late sixteenth century by clandestine Catholics during the reign of Elizabeth I, Tudor, the Protestant, who, in 1558, had wrested the crown, possibly illegally, from the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. Catholics were tortured, killed, banished to Paris by Elizabeth’s astonishingly modern and effective cadre of secret service operatives under the command of the brilliant Francis Walsingham, principal secretary. During her reign, Elizabeth I, Tudor, was under constant threat of assassination by those loyal to Mary. Catholics were forced deep underground in order to evade Walsingham’s minions. Most were found out, but here and there pockets remained.

  One of those consisted of the men who established the Club. They were explorers—or, more accurately, plunderers—of the Levant and points east. But the Crown’s spies were everywhere, and the Club’s membership, including its founders, were eventually found out and thrown in jail. What frightful fate awaited them there can only be guessed at, for at the moment the Tower of London’s gates slammed shut, they vanished from the annals of history.

  The Club passed through a series of owners seemingly indifferent to its innate majesty, until Conrad Shaw, using money from the coffers of the Gnostic Observatines, took possession of the building.

  Now Conrad straightened his tie, shot his cuffs, just in time, as a slim, dapper, impeccably dressed man of about fifty strode into the wood-paneled library. He examined Conrad with an amused seriousness through wire-rimmed spectacles; despite his sleek clothes, he carried atop his head a tousled mop of dark hair.

  “Mr. Yeats,” Bravo’s grandfather said, gripping the poet-philosopher’s hand. “So good of you to come.”

  “How could I refuse?” W. B. Yeats said as Conrad ushered him to one of a pair of fireside chairs. His face was handsome and strong, longish and more or less triangular, with a broad, intelligent brow, graceful cheekbones, and a narrow chin. Even on first glance, Conrad thought, he most certainly did live up to his reputation as being irresistible to the opposite sex. He sat, looking around him with a contemplative, semi-lost gaze, as if regarding everything from the perspective of another world. For this, more than anything else, Conrad liked him immensely. He was trained to recognize a kindred soul when he met one.

  “What you proposed in your letter,” Yeats said, accepting a glass of fino sherry from Toby, “is precisely what I’m after.” The sherry glittered like liquid rubies in the firelight. “For London and its ever-quickening pace wearies me. I find that travel is the best method of catching in midair the essence of new poems.”

  They made a silent toast, the thin rims of the crystal stemware ringing as if in echo. “Do you know,” Conrad said, “the origins of clinking drinking vessels?”

  Yeats pursed his lips, his head cocked to one side, in the manner of someone whose thirst for knowledge knew no bounds. “I don’t believe I do.”

  “In ages past, the vessels were filled to the brim, so that when they were clinked together the wine from each one would slop over to the other, thus ensuring that neither one was poisoned.”

  “Marvelous!” Yeats’s laugh was quite a bit louder than was normal in the club’s library, and several sclerotic heads swiveled in his direction.

  “The creaking of old bones,” Conrad said with a complicit smile.

  “Indeed.” Yeats was peering into his sherry as if it were a crystal ball. “As weary hearted as a hollow moon.”

  “These gray men. Retired from the Order. Window dressing is still a necessity, you see, in order for us to carry on our real work.”

  With the precision of a ritualist, Yeats placed his empty glass down in the exact center of the marquetry side table, as if doing so would unlock a doorway visible only to him. The gesture completed, Yeats turned his full attention to Conrad. “And the nature of your real work.” He said this not as a question, not as a command, but as a statement that would, in his estimation, become, in the future, a prologue.

  “The Gnosti
c Observatines, of which my father is the current head, is a Catholic order formed in the fifteenth century. Over the centuries it has evolved into a lay order; its members are more interested in seeking out and accumulating artifacts of an occult nature than they are in prayer and meditation.” Conrad sat forward. The firelight licked at one side of his face, turning it fierce, atavistic. Right away, he could see that attracted his esteemed guest. “And by ‘occult’ I am speaking of the real thing. The Order is uninterested in the hucksters, charlatans, and tricksters claiming occult powers.” He placed his palms together. “In short, we are archeologists of an alternate history, buried carefully and deeply, ignored by the accounts of history with which, as highly educated men, we are both familiar.”

  “As you are no doubt aware,” Yeats replied, “I was brought up in Ireland, county Sligo, to be exact, under the auspices of the Protestant Ascendancy, which was, in those days, already splintering. As the Catholics came to power, so did the urgency of Irish nationalism. This, far more than religion, has shaped my life thus far.”

  “Now you are a member of the Golden Dawn, a sect of the Rosicrucians, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Yeats inclined his head. “A membership that has caused me no end of trouble and ridicule.”

  Conrad smiled. “Courage under fire. A superlative trait.”

  “Useful, as well.”

  Conrad laughed softly. “So then. What shall I call you? Daemon est Deus inversus—the demon is a god inverted—as the Golden Dawn does, is far too unwieldly.”