The Revelation of Gabriel Adam (6 page)

The door moaned and creaked, as if the wind was blowing against the entrance. Richard recalled something on the radio earlier in the day about a winter storm and wished he’d paid attention to how bad it was supposed to get.

Air seeped through the hinges on the frame. Candles flickered, their weakened flames threatening total darkness for a moment until they steadied, and light returned to the room.

Then silence.

Against his intuition, Richard considered checking the lock. Then another sound—one that could only be made with a key—the bolt inching out of the socket.
Father Adam and Gabriel are back from the hospital
, he thought. It came as a relief, though not without a hint of embarrassment for his cowardice.

Before he reached the doors to greet them, the hinges cracked. The doors blew open and slammed against the wall.

A man in black appeared from the shadows. Wind slipped by and extinguished all the candles by the entrance. His hands were clasped behind him, and upon entering, he turned and closed the door, sealing the weather outside.

“Pardon the intrusion,” the man said. Each syllable carried a meticulous pronunciation cast with an accent that hinted at a formal education. He did not approach Richard but instead walked along the outer walls, keeping several rows of pews between them, like a shark circling its prey. “I am Septis, sent by Mastema. I have come seeking you.”

“Excuse me?” Richard tried to gather his wits. “The cathedral is closed until the second of January.”

“Ah yes. The cathedral. I love them, you know. Their majesty. Their craftsmanship. A challenge to the very creativity of God himself.” Septis removed a cigarette from a case and lit it. The flame from the match highlighted his ice-blue eyes. He closed them and inhaled, holding the smoke in, savoring the taste.

Richard took several steps back, away from Septis. Something in the way he said “God” sparked a feeling of panic.

“That is their true purpose, is it not?” Septis said. “A tribute to man’s artistry?” He disappeared behind a large pillar. The shadows surrounding it deepened and bled across the walls and over the pews. They moved with an unnatural flow, extinguishing what remained of the candlelight near the door.

“I sense no power in you yet, boy,” his disembodied voice spoke from the opposite end of the sanctuary.

Richard spun, surprised by the direction of the sound.

“Unlearned and unprepared. Pity.” This time the voice echoed from the growing shadows in another corner of the sanctuary. Each word lingered in the air, mocking Richard with an arrogance of strength.

He searched for movement in the shadows as they closed in, their undulating darkness surrounding him, cutting off escape. “Who are you?”

“I am deception and war.” Septis’s voice moved from one side of the room to the other.

The shadows deepened at the entrance, drowning the remainder of light. They flowed like lava over several rows of pews and crawled up walls, with whispers of hissing and chattering.

“I am strife and jealousy,” he continued.

“No, please,” Richard sputtered over the sounds in the shadows. Tears streamed from his eyes.

“I am wrath and revenge.” Septis emerged from the thick darkness as if from behind a curtain, cigarette smoke curling away from his mouth, becoming shadow, as if by magic.

Hundreds of red eyes formed in the blackness that gathered around him. Their snakelike voices drowned out the sounds from the outside world.

Kill him . . .

Eat him . . .

Tear his flesh . . .

Break his bones . . .

He wants Solomon’s book . . .

Mustn’t let him read it, no . . .

Mustn’t let him discover its secret . . .

Richard felt something snap in his mind—a primal, instinctual trigger that told him to run for his life. He turned and fled from the entrance, keys jangling violently in his hands. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, his pulse beating in his ears. His heart thundered against his chest, driving him forward. Yet with all his effort, he knew it would not be enough.

Septis leapt into the air, propelled by an inhuman growl. He covered the entire length of the sanctuary and landed with his black dress shoes on the boy’s shoulders, driving him into the floor. His neck broke at impact, killing him before his body even hit the granite.

Intoxicated by the kill, Septis took another exaggerated drag off his cigarette while standing on the boy’s back. Spreading his arms out as if receiving prayer, he laughed at the image of the outstretched arms of Christ in the stained glass window above.

Some of the ash fell from the cigarette onto his trophy. Septis bent down and twisted the lifeless head to face him. Bones broke and tendons popped in the corpse’s neck. Fixed eyes stared back, lifeless, frozen in horror from their final moment.

Near the altar, an enormous metal cross hung from the ceiling, suspended by heavy steel cord. The shadows noticed it, too, and their hissing became agitated.

Septis stepped off the body and went to the altar, hurling it from his way. He tore the cross from the ceiling, steel cords snapping in half and ripping from the walls, and laid it beside the body. From inside his jacket he pulled out a knife and removed it from its protective sleeve. He kneeled next to the corpse, bending low to press his face to its cheek, then placed the point of the knife on the boy’s sternum. He turned the head so that the vacant eyes looked upwards to the colored image in the stained glass window and whispered, “Who will dare deny us now that you are dead, Fortitudo Dei?”

He plunged the blade into the boy’s still heart with a sickening crunch of bone splitting in two.

CHAPTER TEN

Slow down!” Gabe shouted.

His father ignored the protest and accelerated the car.

“You’re going to get thrown in jail!”

They sped through the city, negotiating the intersecting streets. Turning a sharp corner, their headlights found the trunk of a yellow cab. His dad jammed his foot on the brakes to avoid collision. The antilock mechanism rocked the car with vibrations.

Gabe grabbed the faux leather handlebar on the dash and braced for impact as the car slowed, just short of the cab.

His father cursed under his breath. The panic in his voice caused his accent to become more pronounced. Sometimes, when he was upset or excited, Gabe couldn’t understand him at all.

“What the hell is wrong with you, driving like this?” On the dash, Gabe felt indentions the shape of his fingers in the handle. The feeling of being out of control, especially at the hands of his father of all people, was something foreign, terrifying.

Still, his father ignored him, focused only on the street ahead.

They rode the cab’s bumper for a calm minute, boxed in their lane by traffic, before something caught his dad’s eye. “What’s that?” He leaned into the steering wheel for a better view.

“Never mind. Concentrate on the road.”

“There. In the sky.”

Gabe relented and peered through the windshield and beyond the buildings in the distance to see an all too familiar orange glow coloring the sky.

“That’s the direction of the cathedral,” he said and hit the horn, causing the car next to them to stop short as he cut in front. The engine revved, and the front end lifted, pushing Gabe back into his seat. The car lurched forward faster and sped around the cab. “Put on your seat belt,” his father said. He seemed desperate.

“Trust me. It’s been on since we left the hospital.” Gabe tightened the band over his chest, ensuring its tension.

They veered into oncoming traffic to get around another cab, but then his dad jerked the wheel at the sight of flashing headlights and swerved back into their lane. The sound of a horn blared past his window.

“You’re going to get us killed,” Gabe said.

They turned onto a street filled with traffic, ignoring the red light. Cars slid on the snow and asphalt, brake pads smoking in a near pileup. His father spun the wheel again and righted the car onto the road leading to the cathedral. The sudden change in direction threw Gabe into the passenger door, his shoulder ramming the hard plastic.

“We’re almost there. Hold tight.” He then gasped and stood on the brakes, hurtling Gabe toward the windshield. The seat belt locked and snapped him back, his face barely missing the dash. They skidded to a stop just ahead of a gridlock of unmoving vehicles swarmed by hundreds of people.

A hellish light flickered behind the buildings. It illuminated the sky and cast the whole city block into silhouette.

Gabe caught a glimpse of smoke behind a building and instantly recognized the shape of one of the towers. “The cathedral,” he said. “It’s burning.”

“Dear God, no . . .”

Ahead, blue lights spun on the police cars that blocked the intersection.

Flames as tall as buildings, both awesome and terrible, burned into the sky. One of the outer walls buckled out from the sanctuary and crumbled to the ground. Showers of spark and ember flew into the air as the last tower toppled, its bell cutting through the burning brick and mortar.

His father put the car in park and threw open his door. “Stay here. Look after the car.”

Gabe ignored his father and followed him toward a police officer pushing back the stream of people trying to get closer to the spectacle.

His dad pointed to the burning church and grabbed his clerical collar to present to the cop. “Please. Let me by. I need to speak with whoever is in charge. This is my cathedral.”

The officer stood aside and held out his hand, offering a way past. His eyes looked sad, sympathetic. “Whatever you say, pal. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. It ain’t good.”

Smoke and fire whipped about in the swirling air currents, casting shadows onto the ground and adjacent buildings. The orange-lit cloud and smoke and the ash that merged with snow blowing through the air were indistinguishable.

Gabe stared at the wreckage, staying behind as his father disappeared into the crowd. A feeling, like a growing warmth at the base of his skull, anchored to a spot just above his neck and radiated into his body as if something inside him, like a sixth sense or intuition, was sending a warning.

Firefighters at the edge of the blaze had shifted priorities from saving the church to preventing the fire from spreading. Their tanker trucks fired jets of water onto the ruins from hoisted ladders. Rivers of black water flowed through the streets and gutters.

Feeling scared and alone, Gabe searched for his father in the crowd. Police wrangled with the mob of onlookers, and reporters gathered around the grassy area in front of the cathedral, their interest drawn away from the inferno. Lights from the cameras of a television crew cast beams through the smoke. People pressed against a police barrier, their mass forming a wall that blocked Gabe from seeing what was beyond until one of the firemen parted the mob.

The moment froze in his mind like a photograph—Richard’s body, smoking and mutilated, hanging upside down on a cross sticking out of the ground.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A taxi horn woke Gabe. He sat up, squinting at the morning sunlight, and checked his surroundings, half expecting to see the burning cathedral. The car had been moved since last night, where he had retreated after witnessing the horrible scene with Richard. Gabe tried not to think about it as he lay alone in the backseat with his father’s jacket draped over him.

Sleeping in a pretzeled position for so many hours had left his body stiff and sore. The muscles in his legs and back felt taut like pulled ropes, ready to snap. He used the roomy space in the back of the car to stretch in hopes of relieving some of the tension.

Outside, the street looked busy enough with traffic and pedestrians—all going somewhere in a hurry despite it being New Year’s Day. Most everybody wore a suit.

The Financial District
.

A No Parking sign was visible just outside the passenger window. Soot caked the hood, and ash still dirtied the windshield. Gabe caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror. Hair stuck out like he’d slept in an electric chair. His clothes hung in a mess of wrinkles.