Commitment - Predatory Ethics: Book II (7 page)

Balzeer had never used the chamber in the task for which it was now being prepared. He had never summoned his God. Bernhardt held none of the cattle’s distant worship. He revered Lucifer out of tradition and family obligation. He and the Dark Nobility were acquainted with the Prince and His Hell because some of the Dark Nobility was born there. Those known as the Black Nobility knew Hell as their ancestral land, their motherland.

He stepped into the pentagram and began his incantations. No cow could do this because it wasn’t summoning per se, it was teleportation: the conjurer did not bring anything to the earth he went to Hell. There were still more outstanding requirements few could fulfill.

The conjurer had to add his own pain and self-sacrifice by reliving the worst in their own life. This could only be done with pharmaceutical help and Bernhardt took the potion needed. He immediately saw his daughter’s face horror stricken beneath him in a Black Mass. Bernhardt became part of the chamber and relived his worst memory.

He was a young father with ambitions of past conquerors goading him into ruthless actions. His little Seraphina had misbehaved, and he brought her to a Black Mass to frighten her into submission, but it went horribly wrong. Seraphina was just like her mother and continued to be loud and spiteful despite her fears. This drove her father into unreasoning anger and when the ceremony called for the Humiliation of the Innocent he volunteered her and gave her up to teach her a lesson.

They held Seraphina down, and everyone lined up to take a turn. Right before the first was to take her Bernhardt came to his senses. It was too late. He begged to take her back, but was told that reneging an offered innocent carried with it the direst retributions.

He did not know a fraction of what he knew now, about the Nobility or Lightbringers or any of the tangled, intertwined treachery involved with Templars allies, known and unknown. He was only an ambitious young father who had lost control of his daughter. Were it to have been today Bernhardt was sure he would’ve found a way to back out of the offering. Years ago, in that terrible moment, he could do nothing but verbally deny them little Seraphina.

His hesitation irritated the High Black Mass Priest so he ordered the wavering Hapsburg to be the first or his daughter would be flayed alive. The threat made his blood first run cold then rocket to boiling, yet still, he did nothing. He felt the rage build in him decades later but also remembered his appalling and eventual submission.

The priest reasoned that his daughter would survive this. All the while the young father’s reluctance wore away until he started to undress as the priest continued; in time she would forget it. Time would heal this wound also. He was a wealthy man; he could hire a battery of doctors to help her and she would get through it. The argument brought him to stand naked and still unwilling to give Seraphina up. He still weighed fighting his way through the leering mob when disgraced, he silently nodded his head.

He chose not to pit his years of martial knowledge against the untrained throng because the priest’s words had finally swayed him. The point that convinced him was detailing how much the act would improve his position in the Dark Nobility. The offering of your own child and then being first to humiliate her or him was unique and would automatically grant Bernhardt title of Philosopher. He would leap over Illuminatus, Initiate of Sanctuary of Gnosis, and Royal Ipsimus, just below the Kings and the Id. By the time he faced her, Seraphina was terrified and finally stunned to silence. This still gave him an instant of satisfaction she learned her lesson, but it was dashed against the cost: the crime he committed.

He sobbed at the vivid memory, adding fuel to the fire of the already anguished prisoners of the chamber. Seraphina’s face was contorted, and she screamed and screamed. From then on her life turned to pain. Each new doctor Bernhardt took her to, reminded him of her pleading, sobbing face as she begged that she would be good, hoping he would stop hurting her.

He finished and watched his little girl slowly ebb out of Seraphina’s eyes while every man there did what he had done. She never recovered. The priest had lied and Bernhardt knew she never would. As he also knew the priest had not lied about the advancement in their Great Plan. He leaped over many who hadn’t done such despicable acts and that awful day was in no small part, responsible for where he was today.

This reliving completed the final part for an audience with Lucifer, in Hell. The chamber dissolved around him and was replaced by nightmares unseen and unimagined on Earth. His most painful memory was still bringing him success. There was never a moment he didn’t remember it. It drove him forward in every difficult situation. Today it was responsible for transporting him to Hell. He made sure Seraphina’s sacrifice would never be worthless. Bernhardt would’ve destroyed the world entire before he allowed what she went through to be for naught.

He still sobbed amidst devils, demons, and the damned around him. The memory never ended and continued now. He relived every part exponentially. Years later when Bernhardt became a Templar and buried his wife, he chose advancement over his Seraphina again.

He moved on among torture scenes and impossibly decorated, freestanding sets where devils, imps, fiends, and demons all giddily went about their work. Some even had audiences inhaling the pain and torment and savoring it. A few even turned to Bernhardt as he went by attracted by the sharp grief he continued to feel. The contrived and manufactured settings for the torture and torment of the damned were only there for as long as the demons wanted to use them. They would sooner or later be replaced by other terrors they extracted from the imaginations of their victims. Bernhardt descended the rings until he reached the ninth and saw Lucifer’s palace. All the while his thoughts tore open wounds he believed had scarred over. The tears and grief stricken rage stopped. He suffered inside and felt lacerations and trauma as his emotions left his psyche in strips and ribbons with this forced reliving. Through his tears he remembered his further disgrace.

He had read in a forbidden text that the entrance into the pinnacle of the Dark Nobility was granted to those who took their most beloved lives with their own hands. He came home one day and went to Seraphina’s room. As she lay sleeping, he stood over her for the longest time. The memory went on in his mind as he continued to the only structure in the vast openness of Hell.

Seraphina woke to see her father standing over her. He saw a mute hope in her eyes not to be hurt. He didn’t acknowledge it and centered his attention on the small and only consolation to this final deplorable act when his hands closed around her soft throat. In Hell, he clenched and unclenched the same murderous hands and surrendered to the rest of the damning memories. He was in Hell after all.

As he squeezed his Seraphina’s life between his hands, he found a sliver of solace that it would end her suffering. Her final sacrifice would assure that her first would not be in vain. It would catapult him into the Black Nobility and leave the Dark Nobility ignorant of its existence.

In Hell he reached and went inside the infernal mansion, looking about, going past sumptuous rooms filled with dangerous treasures. He ended up in a grand ballroom replete with golden sconces holding up twinkling lights as bright as the stars.

The Supreme Tribunal and Templar Grand Master finally stopped before his lord Satan, who turned and smiled with the warmth that made him God’s favorite worlds ago. It was why no cow and only a predator could come to Hell. Only a predator of the Black Nobility could do what was required to achieve this pinnacle in evil in debasement of life and love. It wasn’t enough to do the acts. You had to feel the sorrow and regret for squandering the most precious in your own life.

The sacrifice was not only who you loved. It went torturing and murdering any humanity and feeling left in you. Your capacity, sensitivity for feeling in any depth determined how high you would rise in the Black Nobility. There were only a handful of predators who ever achieved this position.

This went unexamined in Bernhardt’s mind while theatre was acted out before him. It stopped as Bernhardt entered the room and Lucifer dropped what He was doing to give him His full attention. The décor of the chamber was gilded and sparkled a thousand times brighter than the gold and exaggerated baroque splendor of Louis XIV. It was cavernous and He was nearly fifty feet away, the ceiling still more than ten feet above Him.

The sun drenched first Nephilim flapped His wings once and was almost upon Bernhardt. As He got closer to his God, Bernhardt saw why He had been God’s premiere angel, his herald before the second-rate Gabriel. His every feature was the perfection Michelangelo, and Phidias the master from antiquity crafted from stone made flesh. They saw features and form like this in their imagination and never achieved Lucifer’s sublime perfection in their work. Were they to see Him they would know it did not only reside in their minds.

After His fall from God’s Grace, the only outward marring of His form was in his wings. They became as black as His heart had turned from the bitterness of God’s rejection. He became evil because He lost any hope of ever being with God. He would never hear His voice or know that perfect peace and that was unbearable.

“Supreme Tribunal.” His voice was music, an even tone that caressed the ears and enraptured. Bernhardt saw the play Lucifer acted out before he came in and was actually impressed by the inspired bit of torture. A man hung suspended in mid-air while all about him were the smallest of great lizards from prehistory. Miniature T-Rexes and allosauruses chomped at the securely floating man as they floated around him at Satan’s whim. With each ripped morsel, the man flinched and winced when the flesh grew painfully back. No blood spilled anywhere because it didn’t have time to. The pain the man endured was constant as little chunks fed the tiny dinosaurs, no more than a few inches high each, and grew back with excruciating severity. “Bernhardt Hapsburg, please meet Kostadinos Paleologos,” he said with and equal reverence for both.

In Who to Trust

Time: February 11
^th
, 1974, Danvers State Hospital, Danvers, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

Doctors Megin and Gallagher had not come alone again. With them was the same person who regularly accompanied them since November of last year. Once a month like clock work this man walked with a mistaken high opinion of himself and his step was timid, unsure. It was light, and he did not come down completely in his loafers. They introduced him again as Chief Superintendent Dr. Phoggel and I nodded at him. His offered hand was left hanging when I looked at my straightjacket as explanation and shrugged with an apologetic smile.

He continued with his own attempt at apology and straightened his glasses above his thin, stubble-lined face. The least he could’ve done was shave I thought. He’d been coming here with seven o’clock shadow and grossing me out for months. My eyes strayed to Dr. Megin who tried her usual best to get a word in edgewise to Dr. Gallagher’s continual buzz of conversation. In the moments she took a breath, Dr. Megin forged her contribution to the session and gave her boss a longer breather.

After the introductions and pleasantries were over they got to business and told me all about the many people that love me. This wasn’t news and I don’t understand why they kept repeating it, but I played the drooling idiot they required and nodded off as they spoke. I listened with half an ear and waited to see if they noticed. It’s fun to mess with others when you’re crazy.

Yes, I know I’m nuts, but I’m working on it. I also found one of the silver linings is that you don’t have to be as pleasant to everybody. You’re afforded wider latitude of behavior when you’re considered “not well”. A social faux-pas like falling asleep in mid-conversation or irritating someone with constant questions are overlooked if not humored.

It’s liberating to let oneself go in these situations and not adhere to polite standards. If you fart, burp, or don’t pay attention to whoever is addressing you, it’s not a big deal. The most you get is a polite request not do that, which you can ignore if you want. After all, they all know you’re crazy, “not well”. I gotta tell ya, it’s taken a load off of my mind of being civil.

So I hear a polite silence as the session goes into the inevitable questions of background and name and the stuff I’ve yet to answer.

“You wouldn’t believe me. I know you won’t.” My voice startles everyone in my padded room.

“Try me,” Phoggel said. I see I irritate him by saying it at the same time.

“No, I won’t try you,” I answer and see his irritation deepen. For somebody who is supposed to deal with difficult people, he was easy to goad. It took Megin a few weeks of impudence to have her leave the room in a huff. I still hadn’t gotten to Gallagher because she just didn’t spend that much time in here.

“Why are all these different people contacting you?” Phoggel asked, his eyes probing with interest. I couldn’t take his earnestness seriously.

“I don’t know, what do they say?” I asked.

“They call you their Redeemer, Messiah, Lord of Lords, Dawnbringer, Son of the Prince,” he continued. “Who is this Prince?”

“The Prince of Lies.” I had already said more in the past few minutes that I had for weeks, and I could tell this bothered Megin. I could apologize, but the only explanation I could give her was that Phoggel was much more fun to talk to.

His over-emoting was unconscious and entertaining. His every action and word was contrived, extroverted, and goddamn funny. He tried so hard to hide his effeminate traits that they squirted out of his shoddy macho skin like ten pounds of shit shoved into a five-pound bag.

“So you think that you’re the Son of Satan?” he asked. “The Antichrist. Is that right? Hmmm.”

“No, I’m not saying that, they are by calling me the One.” I watched him hold his breath when I said The One though nobody told me of it. Hee, hee, hee, he’s a hoot. Goddamn better than television Phoggel was.

“Well, sir. We have ten people, including you, that say they’re the Antichrist. Charles Manson even says he is from time to time. Who should we believe?”

“Nine of us must be wrong.” Megin and Gallagher contain their chuckles beneath their breath. “I’m not telling you anything that all the letters that have led you here haven’t already. I don’t care about all these people. They care about me. I’m not saying any of it, they are. Get it? Are they getting any mail?” I tossed the reply with disgust that he was the chief of anything.

The piece if me that cowered beneath my present facade of bravado began to enjoy himself. Despite his normally catatonic state, I held his own against this self-important fop. We threw down against this guy like he was a cure for our problems. Although he saw I was restrained with Phoggel, the broken part of me also understood how restrained I was. The instant I saw Phoggel, he disliked him. It was the contrived pride and overbearing authority that got under his skin, well, our skin. I had never seen or felt such automatic and unreasoning dislike and contempt in my life.

My incarceration was a complete but not unwelcome surprise. Here at least I could catch my thoughts and regroup myself. I had a group in me, Me, my broken self and our Shade, the Darkness. The adoration from everyone from so many different places freaked me out because wherever I was the letters followed.

“We have hundreds of letters addressed to you. How do they know you’re here?” he asked and startled me back to the present.

I only shrugged. I didn’t know the first time they asked anymore than I did then. I imagined just how deep into the padded rooms they would stick me if I had said that out loud.

“You were found among a total of seventy-two bodies. Some were decapitated, and all were arranged in scenes and groups. There were also a few degrading Catholic and Christian symbols. This is in keeping with your assertion that all these sacrifices were to earn your favor.” Dr. Phoggel was fishing with some dangerous bait if he believed this. “At the time you were found and all through your trial you asserted these were all for tribute. Every letter you’ve received states this also.” He let a pause lure me in as he scanned his notes.

“We’re on the fence in all of this. All our training, education, and reason tell us that there’s no such thing as the Devil or Antichrist, or AntiXos, however, we’re prepared to listen to what you’ve got to say.”

This guy was good. I tell myself that despite my earlier dismissal of him and now this deliberate awkwardness, he is playing dumb. I smirked to me that I should be careful with this guy, he seemed to be a little too adept at something we were born into. He lied like one of the family.

The Shard wasn’t listening. It has always been a weakness to tell my story to whoever will listen.

You’re listening.

“Go on,” I said evenly without the earlier skepticism or insolence.

“There are hundreds of different people who believe the exact same thing about you. They are totally isolated from one another and have come to the same conclusion. Our experience and study have shown us to at least entertain with an open mind.”

“Dr. Phoggel,” Dr. Megin interrupted. “I would like to speak to you before you continue with this.”

“Yes.” He got up and followed Megin out into the hall. As the door closed, I could hear their conversation. She voiced strong reluctance to pursue this direction in my treatment, and Phoggel told her to keep her reluctance to herself, he was in charge.

Not in such a succinct encapsulation, but he curtly tapped any of her reservations and disagreement off. When they walked back through, he finally said if she had any complaints to file them officially.

“To go back to where we were, our training and experience have told us there is no Satan or AntiXos. One of the key minds of our field has said God is dead.”

“The churches of the world would disagree. The Xians especially,” the Shard answered.

“Yes. There can be no argument however, without discussion,” he said peaceably, and, with it, relaxed me completely.

Time: Hell.

Lucifer sat at a grand chair carved out of nightmarish gargoyles that could have stood in for any number of His historic incarnations. Some were bastardizations and mutations of the Greek satyr Pan, others amalgamations of lizards, snakes, panthers or other beasts. It was a frightening thing anywhere else, but given its context in Hell and the true devils about them, it really didn’t inspire fear only admiration of craftsmanship. It was a stunningly carved and put-together piece of furniture that paled to the magnificent beauty that had His bare ass seated on it.

Eyes that drifted from emerald green, sapphire blue and mildest gray, to amethyst, violet, and auburn that matched His nearly blonde hair smiled easily with His stunning grin. He was telling the scared and tattooed, hardened Nobleman all about His deep disappointment with His only son. He told him about the plan they had put together for the raid at Digby and despite the confusion of the battle everything had fallen into place.

He had come to Earth and was to take over Pike who led the Luciferian expedition. Instead, He went to the only one left alive beside His beloved boy, the adopted kidnaper and usurper Kostadinos. He was disoriented by this change of plans or else He wouldn’t have been so easily angered by Adam’s rebellion. He should’ve just let him have his own way until he could be nudged toward his destiny. He shouldn’t have pushed it He admitted. He was new at this parenting. He just wanted His child to do his best.

He was surprised at how quickly He had lost His temper and His legendary patience. The long history of the Nephilim and was built on glacial and geologic patience. He proved time and again to be more patient than the continents, but it shattered whenever He dealt with humanity directly. He was too emotional with all His children but more so with His blood relative.

Bernhardt listened as He told him of the outrageous insult of exorcism by His own son. Bernhardt could not imagine such betrayal, easily forgetting his own inverted one. He asked quickly how he could have performed the Roman ritual himself without the proper training.

Lucifer stopped, was silent a few long seconds, and when He spoke again His voice quivered with rage and resentment. “He has turned on Me completely. Utterly. I don’t know how this happened, but the boy is both AntiXos and Xos/Christ.”

Laughter punctuated the Devil’s pain. It peeled out from beneath low groans of pain and rudely interrupted their conversation. Kostadino added his own voice to Lucifer’s pained admission. “He’s his own man, daddy. You’ll not sway him with threats and weak arguments to do as he’s told.”

“What did you do to him?” Lucifer stretched out his wings and flew to face Kostadino. The wondrous jet-black wings lazily opened and closed keeping Him afloat and staring at His son’s abductor. “You turned him away from those who love him, and now he’s left alone in the world.”

“I only gave him the luxury of choice,” Kostadino answered. “He will do with his life what he wishes.”

“How did you make him both Xos and AntiXos?” Bernhardt had joined the discussion but from some twenty feet below. He shouted somewhat but nobody minded the volume.

“I didn’t. It was his refusal that did that. Now it will be more difficult to live an ordinary life,” Kostadino said with regret. “Now he’s taken in all the written and prophesied destinies.”

“Yes, it will,” Lucifer, said grimly.

“Everyone will want him as their Messiah. He’s become the world’s savior. Everybody will both love and hate him because he is all things to everybody.” Kostadino smiled and Lucifer struck him with his perfect right fist.

“You’ll forever pay for this insolence, this treachery.”

“I knew there wasn’t a hope in Hell I wouldn’t,” Kostadino answered ignoring the cold, hard fury that was changing the shinning being before him into some Halloween cliché. His wings grew harder and leathery, His hair turned to fire, not red but actual flames licking about His head. The changing eyes that drifted into every color now burned coal red and His skin became hard and no breath raised or lowered His chest.

“I knew what the punishment might be and despite all that, it was worth it.” He didn’t falter as the personification of evil came closer and began his own personal torture. “You’ll see it too.” His last words were labored and heard amidst long, agonized screams.

Bernhardt was no stranger to torture. He committed some of it. As a predator, he could go beyond what the cows endure to watch; yet he still had to look away.

Time: February 14
^th
, 1974, Danvers State Hospital, Danvers, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

It was the first night I slept in weeks. Broken Adam had been avoiding sleep because I used the subconscious to plead my case about Kostadino’s damnation. Tonight I faced me again and seemed a lot more receptive to what I had to say.

My Shard self was humming Jim Croce’s
Time in A Bottle
and I joined in.
“If I had a box just for wishes and dreams that have never come true.”
I stopped and looked at him and hoped he saw the bottomless regret I did feel for putting my/our father at the mercy of the Devil. I tell him I blamed myself, and he quickly retorted then nothing’s changed because he blamed us too.

“I’m trying not to be completely unreasoning with this, but it’s very hard.” His face showed the determination I always saw in mine when I refused to be swayed and to make up my own mind. We could see all that was happening was being engineered by our true father to manipulate us. Neither of us wanted that.

We continued forward, looked at my face, and smirked at literally confronting one’s self this way. We both looked at Adam one regretful, the other angry and bitter and the Broken Adam softened. He finally knew what I had been trying to tell us all along. We would never knowingly do what I did if he had the choice. Grief kept him from accepting our motives never changed. We were still the same stubborn fool Kostadino raised. In the middle of our near armistice the world around us changed.