The Keys of Solomon (3 page)

“The Church. A haven for murderers, thieves, and molesters of small children! By what right does such an institution pronounce any degree of self-righteous judgment upon me or my masters? You've no right to damn me, murderer!”

Through clinched teeth, Falco said, “By virtue of your betrayal and my oath, it is my right, my duty, to do exactly that!”

“Then to hell with us both!” The bishop's voice grew raspy, deeper, more forceful. His eyes pulsed in the dark with an ugly yellow aura and Falco fought the urge to step back. Throwing back the sheets, Hollingsworth started to rise from the bed.

Can't let him get to his feet!

Falco shoved the Glock's heavy barrel into the man's face and drove him back onto the pillows. Stout fingers clawed at Falco's eyes and throat, but the priest-turned-assassin brushed them aside. Two silicon-tipped slugs tore through the old man's brain, silencing him forever.

Falco steeled himself for the inevitable aftershock, and nearly fell as the room tilted, and spun violently. The episode, familiar yet always disorienting, was over in seconds. As the vertigo receded, Falco looked down upon the ruined face of the man he had once called Father. He searched Hollingsworth's lifeless hand for the ring, the signet of the office of bishop coadjutor. He tugged the ring free and dropped it into his shirt pocket. Falco paused briefly to genuflect.

“So you know me, know what I am, do you?” he asked softly. “And now you know the wrath of my God. Peace, be still.”

CHAPTER 2

Tempe, Arizona

Sam Conner walked across the expansive campus of Arizona State University at Tempe, lugging a backpack the size of a small camelback trunk, contemplating his short life. In fact, life hadn't been especially good the past couple of years. Of course, it wasn't all that bad. Many people had it much worse, Sam knew. It was just that things were so unpredictable, so … strange. Or weird. Yeah, that's it. Weird.

His father, a good and decent man, was a much-too-young victim of heart disease. This was a man who had never inhaled anything stronger than smoke from burnt toast, and who jogged with religious zealousness, except when it snowed. And snow was seldom a showstopper in Sun City, Arizona. Allan Theodore Conner. Age forty-one. Dead of a massive coronary. Not a weird man by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly the victim of weirdness.

His mother, God bless her pointed little head, had always been an introvert. She was even more so now. Ever socially withdrawn and moody, she had now joined the ranks of the emotionally missing in action, vacant of both mind and soul. Sam supposed this was to be expected of most people when they lose a soul mate. And Sam's parents had been that if nothing else. Of course, it didn't matter that she had an excuse. Excuses didn't help kids navigate their own myriad problems. Kat needed her mother, more now than ever before.

Katherine “Kat” Conner was Sam's younger sister, and the child grew weirder by the day. Again, Sam figured that was also to be expected. In the first place, she was female. Sam figured that covered a lot of the “weirdness” issue. However, to compound problems, she was also more or less a brand-spanking-new teenager, having reached the venerable age of fourteen less than a week before. Unfortunately, she was also far more mature than any of her friends or peers, and some of her middle school teachers. Wisdom in youth usually creates more problems than it ever solves, or at least that was Sam's take on the matter. When it came to kids, the world just wasn't hardwired to draw distinction between “wise” and “wise-ass.” And finally, poor Kat was female, or had Sam already factored that in?

But there was more to Kat's problem than gender-specific hormones, age-defying wisdom, and a rapidly maturing self-awareness. Much more. Always an exceptionally bright kid, that intelligence was now augmented by the manifestation of her special gifts, legacies from her genetic inheritance. Sam knew firsthand that few things in this world or any other could possibly be any weirder than an Offspring first coming into his or her legacy.

Offspring. The descendants of angelic trysts with humans as recorded in the Old Testament and other, older non-Christian texts. There had been a special age during which humanity had coupled with divinity, at least according to those diverse religious belief systems. The result of all that coupling was children, but not just any children. These carried perhaps the most amazing bloodline in all of Creation, a bloodline that resulted in genetic freaks possessing a marvelous supernatural “gift.” By virtue of the divine heritage, they were capable of extraordinary feats.

Sam had learned that in this modern era, not all who carried the watered-down bloodline experienced an awakening of the genetic gifts. Thousands of Offspring lived mundane lives and died mundane deaths, never the wiser regarding their angelic heritage, and many who did notice their strengths had no idea what to attribute them to. No such luck for Sam. His gifts manifested at birth, and were still emerging twenty years later. And thanks to those gifts, his life was too weird to even consider he would ever know mundane anything. The same applied to Kat. Sam could admit to himself that while Kat wasn't nearly as weird as her older brother, she was quickly budding into quite the Offspring debutante.

Sam chuckled at the mental image of an Offspring Ball. “Weird or not, I crack me up sometimes.”

Things had been strange for Sam long before he learned of the Offspring connection, his blood legacy, or the supernatural gifts associated with his inheritance. You could ask his paternal grandmother, Nanna, about Sam. She could tell you some stories about weird. If she were alive, that is. Nanna had been gone several years now, “moving on to the happy hunting grounds,” she'd said just before she died of cancer. Half Scottish, half Lakota Sioux, she loved to slip in those Hollywood clichés about American Indians when you least expected them. Sam was sure Nanna also had the gifts. People who knew her said she had the “second sight.”

Sam's old friend Michael Collier could also tell some great stories about Sam's weirdness, but … he was dead too. Or at least, Sam thought so. The big cop was taking his last breath on earth, dying from a massive head wound, when he stepped into the damaged supernatural Veil that separated the myriad planes of existence. Planes that comprised much more than the mere universe, they made up all of Creation. The Multiverse, as Horace liked to say. Michael Collier's sacrifice had bought a little time for the much-maligned human race. Only time would tell if humanity was really worthy of the price.

Of course, not all witnesses to Sam's weirdness were dead. Mark Pierce knew all about Sam. Of course he would. He was also an Offspring. Charlene Hastings, Sam's love of loves, knew he was a little
different
, but she had no idea. No idea. No sense asking her about the weirdness. Maybe you could ask Skinny Henderson, Sam's best friend through middle school. Except that, while Skinny was still very much alive today, he refused to talk to or about Sam Conner. Skinny was scared shitless of Sam.

And then there was Horace, the sometimes rambling old black man, sometimes damn near omnipotent archangel. He occasionally went by the name Uriel, but to his friends he was always Horace. Like Nanna, Michael, and Mark, Horace could tell some stories that are weird with a capital
W,
but he wasn't around much these days. Sam figured the old man would turn back up when the time was right. And as much as he loved Horace, he dreaded seeing him again. His appearance would only mean more weirdness was on the way.

In fact, Sam decided there were only two sources you could check with to fully understand his heightened state of weirdness. You could check with Joriel, the angel with the attitude who sometimes lived in Sam's head. She knew Sam inside and out, literally. Sometimes, Joriel would disappear for long stretches, but she always came back. She had been with him since the moment of his birth. Perhaps even before.

And if you were allergic to heavenly beings, you could check with the opposing side. The demons of Legion knew Sam was weird, all right. And they wanted him dead for it. They were the Enemy, and Sam had drawn first blood.

Weirdness had always been Sam's salvation and his eternal damnation. In the case of demons, being different had saved his life several times. He could see the bastards coming, even when they didn't want to be seen. He could hear them over great distances. Hell, he could smell them! The odor nearly always knocked him to his knees and left him shaking like a drunk in the throes of the DTs.

But Sam didn't want to think about that today. Upon reaching the residence hall, Sam staggered upstairs to his dorm room, nudged open the door with the toe of his sneaker, and stepped inside. He grimaced. The air conditioner was set on high, but it was blowing lukewarm air again. Sam dropped his backpack at the foot of the narrow dorm room bed, and sat down beside it. He didn't want to think about angels or demons, Offspring or gifts, today. Not now. Not anytime soon.

Time for the old Jedi mind trick, Sammy. Use the Force. Push that bullshit out of your mind and concentrate on something else. Anything else. Like, maybe the temperature in this friggin' sweatbox!

While Sam hoped to never, ever again see snow, he did find himself wishing for a cool November rain. He peeled off his soggy T-shirt, paused for a moment to examine the mass of angry-looking scars that crisscrossed his chest, then mopped the perspiration from his forehead and dropped the shirt to the floor.
Thanksgiving is next week and it's 102 degrees outside.

He glanced at the desk clock and groaned. He had an evening biology lab in exactly two hours and thirty-five minutes, in a building located on the other side of the sprawling Arizona State University campus, and the thought of trudging back across a sweltering campus while carrying a backpack full of textbooks did nothing to lighten his mood.

He considered ditching the lab but reluctantly dismissed the idea. He was already having hell with biology.
Like dissecting piglets is gonna help me land that dream job with Boeing or McDonnell Douglas. Maybe I should've taken that scholarship to U of W at Green Bay,
he thought.
I bet they don't have to put up with 102 kiss-my-melted-ass degrees!

Sam rolled over onto his side and felt the shift of scar tissue and loose cartilage in his chest and ribcage. Unpleasant memories hovered just beyond the periphery of his consciousness. He tried to block them out, and was largely successful. But he would never be completely free of the nightmarish memories, not as long as he had the scars to serve as a daily reminder. His physical wounds caused little discomfort, thanks in part to the healing touch of old Horace. However, his body would bear vivid reminders of his past for the rest of his life. And now … new and disturbing blips on his internal radar only aggravated both the physical and emotional injuries sustained in the battle beneath Abbotsville.

For the past couple of years, Sam had been left alone, free of the demonic presences that had stalked him across half of the United States and nearly killed him in the belly of an abandoned mine shaft located in the heart of Tennessee. Since that time, the entire country had experienced inexplicable and unparalleled violence. Sam's small corner of the world was no exception. The city fathers in Phoenix had already established an evening curfew much like those in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta.

The National Guard now patrolled the streets in parts of south Florida, Philadelphia, and a dozen other major cities. Not that it helped much. Or maybe it did, thought Sam. Who knows how high the death count would soar if people were still living unrestricted, normal lifestyles? How many more would disappear without a trace? How many children would be found dead, mutilated beyond recognition?

While Sam occasionally sensed a nearby Enemy, it had been a long time since he felt personally threatened. Most times the telepathic signals were fleeting as the entities seemed to pass through the area, oblivious to Sam's presence. Then, a couple of days ago while sitting in class, Sam felt a chilling tug on the edge of his “internal radar.” This signal wasn't just passing through. It was searching. For him.

Sam's “radar” was an intuitive, psychic instrument that had never once been wrong. The source of this particular signal was very strong, indicating a close proximity. Since then, other blips had increased in both frequency and intensity. The sources were moving in a spiral pattern, working their way closer to Sam with each passing day.

Man, I need a cigarette
.

Ignoring the crumpled box of Marlboros, Sam reached for a pack of gum on the nightstand and unwrapped three sticks. He stuffed them in his mouth, and chewed vigorously for several seconds. After two years, he had just about kicked the smoking habit. Foolishly, he had taken up smoking in the tenth grade in order to impress Cynthia Gault, a popular and more than a little naughty high school pin-up type. He smiled sheepishly at the memory. As far as he knew the tactic had failed miserably and Cynthia graduated from McArthur High, blissfully ignorant of her scrawny, redheaded admirer. Kat still took pleasure in reminding him of that folly.
Oh well, lessons learned, huh?

He rolled off the bed and headed for the small dorm refrigerator. Before he made it across the room, his cell phone rang, playing the theme song to the '60's campy comedy series
Get Smart
.

“Sam. Shoot,” he answered.

“Hiya, kid! How the hell are you?”

Sam grinned. Only one person ever called him “kid.” “Mark! Man, I'm melting like an ice cube in a microwave. Hotter than hell here. Other than that, I'm doing well. How's things with you? Janet doing okay?”

“We're fine, Sam, just fine. Janet's still writing and researching. The newspaper keeps her busy, and she spends all her free time working on the database.”