Commitment - Predatory Ethics: Book II (6 page)

Officer Gorki earned some of the overtime while walking down a street passing a pitch-black alley. It was unnerving to even look at, the dark was complete, a physical thing. Crossing himself, Anatoli thought Hell must be that black. A loud clatter came from the impenetrable depths followed by a scream and laughter. He went forward and shouted, “Who’s there? Militsiya!” He clicked on his flashlight and entered the darkness, quickly enveloped by it. The light shone no further than a few feet.

Steps ahead he came upon a horror that was an indistinguishable mass of horns, fangs, and hair. Distracted by Anatoli’s light, it quickly looked up, mouth dripping blood while still pulling flesh from a human carcass that lay on the ground beneath its teeth. It widened the blood-stained maw to a sneer and advanced on the Militsiya. His flashlight went off and the black was total again. He hit it with his palm and it shone to show the demon closer. The flashlight failed again leaving him picturing the beast closer still. When he got it back on, reality left his imagination gibbering like his
ded
, his grandfather in his last years.

“Nyet, nyet…” His face pushed the words out desperate that they would drive this nightmare from him. It didn’t change anything so he decided to shut the light off with a click. He didn’t want to see it close the lethal distance.

He considered using his gun desperate to stop the inevitable thing almost upon him, or running, maybe if he got out of the alley the thing couldn’t follow. He did neither and stood: a canary in the eyes of a snake, immobilized and waiting for it to claim him.

Revised Predators

Time: February 10
^th
, 1974, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

Xar-eel wore a pleasant human once more. This one bore a striking resemblance to his first possession, a dapper, trim man in his prime of excellent proportions and movie-star good looks. He even liked the orderliness of this mind and the ruthlessness he found in the soul of a surgeon; it matched his own hollow heart.

He had no use for subtlety any longer. With Guy Benoit’s help, he had succeeded in bringing in two more fiends who were firmly behind their candidate Redeemer. The Redeemer had fallen out of favor with his father the Grand Leviathan, so they believed they could bring him back to their fold, and they would in turn be praised and rewarded. Failing that, they thought they could manage something of benefit for the Crusade and for all three of them. They certainly didn’t want to return from whence they came.

The other two wore less conspicuous bodies. One was in a woman of barely twenty, svelte and composed but who abused drugs and alcohol so much she looked twice her age.

The damned were always weak.

Who else would be damned?

Their choices had to fit their careful plans. Belial had chosen the woman, who worked as a nurse in The Redeemer’s hospital while the third, Melchom was an accountant in the Danvers.

“He just doesn’t like any of it,” Xar-eel exasperated, spit out. “There’s no pleasing him. He’s worse than his father. At least you could reason with Morningstar. The Redeemer isn’t listening to anybody now.”

“It’s all your fault then,” Belial accused.

“Why is it my fault?” Xar-eel was taken aback by the insult.

“He was at least talking before you began with all the tributes. Now he’s only in his own head. Nobody can reach him there,” the accountant said.

“Well that’s not exactly true is it?” Belial’s smile hid a tempting secret and drew the other two, compasses to North.

“How do we get to him?” Xar-eel did not like sharing the limelight. “Tell us, Belial, who can reach him there?”

“I know of a lady, a noblewoman in fact,” he implied smugly.

“Mother Rothschild? You don’t even know her, you lying bastard.” Xar-eel shivered in even mentioning the Constant Widow. “She turned her back on us when the first Nephilim dropped from the heavens. She’s not interested in our petty intrigues.”

“I think she’s more than interested. I think she’s the one who’s been goading some of the cattle to sacrifice to the Redeemer,” Belial slyly intoned.

“How?” both the other devils said in stereo.

“Mother Rothschild has been here since the Middle Ages. She knows how to walk in dreams, to reach thoughts.”

“What’s her angle then? Why would she get involved with this or even help us?” Melchom was skeptical.

“She already has the Earth. The only thing left for her is her birthplace,” Belial reasoned out and watched the other two come to the only conclusion left.

“She would war against the Great Leviathan? Nobody ever since…” Melchom’s jaw dropped. “Asmodeus. Revenge. Of course. The cunt.” He was outraged and impressed at the same time. Melchom reminded his partners of the civil war that raged in Hell centuries before. It had coincided with the Black Death of the Middle Ages on earth. A time as the one they were in, when much of humanity believed their lives and souls would be collected.

The struggle for power had been between Melusine’s father, Asmodeus who wanted Lucifer’s throne, and the Fallen Cherubim himself. It did not rage long in Hell, but burned brighter than the sun, the forces unleashed bubbling up and causing a great deal of misery on earth. The repercussions were felt much longer with the Little Ice Age lasting for centuries and more horrible with the Black Death decimating more than a third of the known world. When it was over Lucifer’s Nephilim disposed of any and all the rebellious devils and exiled all friends or kin of the rebels suspected of complicity. The exiled came to earth and joined others who were part of the ruling class, lords and ladies who went on to comprise the Dark Nobility and the first Thirteen Families. It was common rumor and accepted gossip that Melusine Rothschild was one of the refugees who had come and prospered on earth.

“Exactly. She played the dutiful contributor to the Master Plan since before anybody can remember. Most of the Great Families would not exist without her. The Lightbringers may never have happened without her.” Xar-eel was slowly thinking that his hope for advancement in station could either rise or fall with this information. He could also be crushed if these two nobles of Hell and Earth collided. Would he have to take sides and if he did, which one should he support?

The plan the three adventurous fiends finally concocted was to bribe the Redeemer with blood and souls now seemed trivial. Lucifer’s son might even become an afterthought to Him if the Constant Widow was indeed planning to war upon Hell.

Time: February 10
^th
, 1974, Whittier Mansion, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

Balzeer McGrath’s opulent surroundings were too ostentatious for Bernhardt’s liking. Despite his high station, Bernhardt was a career soldier. Even in his boyhood he lived hard, adventuring in the countryside and constantly on the go. His heroes were Alexander the Great and Qin Shi Huangdi. To his mind booth men were ruthless without being overly cruel. Bernhardt believed that when judged against others in their league, such as Napoleon or Hitler, they were justified.

All were astounding conquerors, and the independent Hapsburg admired something about each of them. The thing they all shared was success, with only Alexander and Huangdi unsullied till their deaths. Both Napoleon and Hitler were brought down by arrogance and, in no small measure, cruelty. Both Hitler and Napoleon had overreached and were nationalistic to the point of cruelty. Alexander and Huangdi did not revile any culture or people. They tolerated their own people and did the same for most others.

The distraction of hatred for Jews and Bolsheviks did Hitler in. The hatred of everyone who wasn’t French did the same for the Bonaparte. Both were called little corporal and both were men of small stature who had much to prove to the world. They crashed against the unyielding face of Russia and the vastness of its wastelands and brutal winter. These soldiers had risen from low ranks to rule the cattle. Bernhardt had wanted to rise up in the same way among the predators and achieve as much as his heroes had.

His distaste for Balzeer’s tarnished, gilded finery was in his every move, but he kept his mind on the Great Plan. Not many ever knew the complete details and Bernhardt was one of the few trusted with the whole of it. He was one of the Watchers who looked at all the cattle and the preoccupied predators and manipulated them through history. Not even his heroes had known they were part of a Great Plan, the Builder’s Great Plan. The Builders were the Templar Grand Masters shown the Plan Entire by their predecessors.

Not even the enigmatic Mother Rothschild knew the Plan Entire. She did, however, know which library Balzeer’s portal was in and refused to tell him. It may have been her way of testing his worth, but Bernhardt stopped playing those games years before. He knew if anyone failed at tests there were no real consequences. In his world, you either failed or succeeded. Tests were for children.

He walked down turn after turn and went along corridors with mind numbing atrocities depicted in paintings and sculpture along their sides. They hardly registered above thin distractions till he came to a double set of intricate doors. He swung both wide and was exhilarated by what he saw.

If this wasn’t the portal to the summoning chamber then Bernhardt wasn’t a Hapsburg. Everywhere he looked there were depictions of scenes straight out of the Hell Bernhardt read as a child. These scenes made even him uncomfortable, and the art in the corridors was childhood imagination in comparison.

Dante must’ve based his nine rings of Hell on the depictions about the walls and mantels of the library. They were fairly new, no more than ten years gone, but they were done according to volumes known only to Supreme Tribunals. They received these texts along with their five cardinal marks and were free to use them as they willed.

Unbeknownst to anybody under him, the previous Supreme Tribunal Balzeer McGrath had decided to resurrect this chamber. It had a storied history with the last time it was used being before the eighteenth-century Weishaupt betrayal.

Incantations and intonations were required to use the room, begun with the tracing of forbidden signs. In the past Balzeer’s performance of the ritual was adequate to the task, barely above requirements for access of its function. The intricate patterns he wove into the air were muted before but with Bernhardt they were vivid with a richness that made them come to life. Bernhardt’s predator genes gave the incantation vitality and direct connection to the forces used to conjure. His intonations were deeper, more resonant than Balzeer or any cow’s could’ve been. He mouthed words and phrases of treacherous intimacy created in absolute darkness eons ago that were resonant of a lover’s whispered betrayal or the slit of a sharp knife. The colors previously merely the sickly yellow of a festering wound with Bernhardt’s proper pronunciation took on the deep vigor of venom.

The Nobility was not quite human, and their natural skills demonstrated that as Bernhardt sank into the carpet in his first effort whereas Balzeer took many years to achieve the same. The angry purple of the patterns he wove was now the indigo of a strangled child. The intonations burst some of the light bulbs in the room and turned the gentle flames of the fireplaces into a blaze. The rug made from slaughtered innocents from a brutal past whirl-pooled into a sinkhole of ruinous colors. He was gone seconds later; the only thing that marked Balzeer’s passing was the smell of burned mutton, but Bernhardt’s left the unmistakable odor of brimstone.

He reappeared and six black candles sparked to life in quick succession. They gave enough light to see new abominations around him. He was no longer in the library. All about were real human remnants. Some dangled from hooks, others were impaled on stakes from beneath and from the sides hanging like forgotten clothes. A few continued impossibly to move and were kept unnaturally alive to suffer and provide the room with its fuel: misery.

It was its spark its essence, its lifeblood. Balzeer thought he created it in a moment of inspiration but it had existed well before him; he had but resurrected it. Those still there had been suffering for years, others decades. There were no animals because they couldn’t provide the needed agony a person could. Humans had a lifetime of dreams and hopes that could be ground to dust. The physical pain was part of it. The real fuel came from emotional and psychic torture. People who had the most to lose were the perfect fuel. Ideally they were to be sensitive souls who were just starting their adult lives with promise and expectations. All this promise and hope was slowly squandered not by neglect or inevitable apathy most developed for life but by inflicted pain from the keeper and master torturer of this chamber.

“Balzeer?” a choked, bleary voice said; it was barely above a whisper. “Supreme Tribunal, I beg you I’ll be an asset to the church, please just let me show you, please!” The voice sobbed and cried inconsolably. At first Bernhardt was surprised that there was anyone alive in the summoning chamber, but the tome in which he found the chamber described had also detailed nobody died there. They were to fuel the chamber with whatever its user needed. Only its portal opener was allowed to give the eternal rest all that were imbedded or attached to walls prayed for. The sobbing increased, and the voice screamed in desperation.

“Please! Balzeer let me add value to the company. Please give me another chance. Please! Please! I’ve been here forever!”

Bernhardt paid no attention to the continuing pleading for release. He walked about and with little pity checked if every piece of fuel that hung or was crucified on the stone walls was capable of going on. The energy of their despair and capacity for torment and horrific pain would continue in them all.

These unfortunates had lived lifetimes of pain: whole lives of the needed power for the chamber. Bernhardt knew that despite his own distaste, he wouldn’t stop it. He didn’t bring them there, but he knew that hardly mattered. He would do nothing about their lot because in no small way, he couldn’t bring himself to put somebody else in their place. He could if needed, but wouldn’t because he did not want to add misery to the world unless there was absolutely no other choice. He also wasted nothing but those few thoughts on the subject and moved on to his task.

Half of these people would not live out the day. Bernhardt was intent on the Prince Himself. The timing and proper sacrifices of pain and terror needed to be exact. So few people had ever succeeded in calling Lucifer that nobody could remember the last time it was done. Bernhardt was duty bound to bring Him back and help in any way He needed. Though he chafed under the duty Bernhardt could find no way out of it.

Balzeer had used a contrived beast, the land piranha, to get the proper power from the fuel that hung on the walls. Bernhardt needed more, something more than mere pain. He needed gut-wrenching emotional and psychic torment for his task.

He went around again to each of the thirty-six people attached to the walls. At each he repeated an incantation to bring back suppressed and forgotten misery. Each had their own personal anguish and Bernhardt made these miseries real again. He brought their memory back to their terrible moment, and their awful pain was renewed and compounded.

The past had to be so vividly felt they were only indistinguishable from the originals because they were many times worse. Loss of loved ones was the most common and betrayed love or friendship. Dashed hopes and defeats came close. Another common one was their first day in this same summoning chamber and Balzeer their first tormentor. The awful sights and sounds and every day since then were also highly common.