As Vox thought about his old “friend,” he felt his mouth begin to turn down into its usual frown, but the burn wouldn’t let that happen. Instead his mouth twitched and rebelled and broke into a grin. A big, happy, malicious grin. The old bear’s grin.
He launched himself from his chair and slammed his fist into the wall.
All the way to the elbow.
“Fuck yeah!” he roared, and with a grunt he tore his arm free. The splintered lath tried to claw at his skin, but even though it drew blood it could no more stop him than the cancer could. Not anymore.
Not any fucking more.
He roared again and laughed, and punched the wall again and again.
Then he poured a huge glass of Scotch, gulped it down, and flung himself back into his chair. The computer was still on and he scrolled through his list of names, considering each player and the general chaos in which they all floated. All of them searching for meaning, fighting for it, killing for it, dying for it.
And not one of them-not even Church-appreciating that chaos was its own end. Chaos was its own formless agenda.
“Fuck you, Deacon!” he bellowed and pounded his fist on the table hard enough to make his whiskey bottle dance.
His phone rang and he frowned at it.
There was no screen display at all. Not even one to tell him that it was a blocked call. Vox smiled and picked it up.
“Hello, Uncle.”
“Hello, Nephew.”
“I feel fucking great today.”
“I know. It’s good to have you back.”
“Back? Hell, I was never like this before. I feel… I feel…”
“I know. It’s delicious, isn’t it?”
“Yes it goddamn well is.”
The caller paused. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah.”
“You know there’s no going back?”
“Shit, don’t try to scare me with burned bridges, Uncle. I’m ready to light the match.”
They both laughed quietly about that. Vox, perhaps, laughed a little bit louder.
“Then let it all burn down,” said Father Nicodemus.
Chapter Ninety-Two
Arklight Camp
Outskirts of Tehran
June 16, 3:04 a.m.
We had a quick strategy session during which Lilith told Church that he could have Arklight teams to assist with the refinery raids. He accepted without hesitation. While they began working out the details, I moved outside, needing some space to process everything.
Violin found me in the shadows outside of the warehouse. We stood together looking at the stars. Then she said, “This must be so hard for you. So strange. You, an American soldier… fighting monsters.”
“Since I joined the DMS last year, nothing has been normal. I’m not sure I even believe in that concept anymore.”
“This is normal for me,” she said. “This is all I’ve ever known. I was born into this world.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. It is what it is. Perhaps someday I’ll find another kind of normal.”
“Maybe I can help you look.”
“Maybe you could.”
“About the Sabbatarians,” I said. “You guys seem to hate each other worse than the Dodgers and the Giants. But you’re both kind of on the same side, right? So what gives?”
“‘Same side’?” she snorted. “Hardly. They know that most of us were either breeding stock for the Upierczi or born from those forced matings. The Sabbatarians, in their great Christian mercy, consider us Satan’s whores. The dhampyri doubly so.”
“Jesus.”
“They long ago named us enemies of God and marked us for extermination.” She shrugged. “We have responded in kind.”
“Then I’m glad we put a bunch of those assholes down.”
Violin nodded but said nothing.
Above, the Milky Way pivoted around us.
“You know, one of the things that’s eating at me here,” I admitted, “is Nicodemus. Who the hell is he?”
A haunted look flashed through Violin’s eyes. “As long as there has been a Red Order there has been a Father Nicodemus associated with it. My mother thinks it is the same man, but I don’t believe that. I don’t believe in ghosts or demons; I think it’s part of the propaganda the Red Order has always used. Besides, it’s probably a title passed down from one person to another, much in the same way that ‘Scriptor’ is passed down through the LaRoques.”
“Don’t priests sometimes take new names when they take holy orders?” I asked. “Biblical names?”
“Not as frequently these days,” said Violin, “but yes.”
I pulled my cell and called Bug and told him to hack the Vatican or whoever certifies priests. “If these Nicodemus guys are legitimate clerics,” I told him, “then there should be records in the registry of holy orders. Find out.”
I slipped the cell back into my pocket.
“Nicodemus is a strange man,” said Violin. “I saw him a few times when I was a little girl down in the Shadow Kingdom.” She cut me a look. “That’s what they call it.”
“Yes, very dramatic,” I said sourly. “Can you give me a physical description of Nicodemus?” She did, and I felt my skin crawl. “Okay, that’s a step over the line into weirdsville. That description exactly matches the inmate.”
“What happened to him?” asked Violin.
“He disappeared.”
“How did he escape?”
“I didn’t say he escaped,” I said. “He vanished from his cell. No evidence at all of a jailbreak. Security cameras went haywire, guards saw nothing, and then he dropped completely off the radar. I was there when it happened. Thoroughly creepy and borderline impossible the way it happened. But even so, it couldn’t be the same man. Could it?”
Before she could reply Church appeared in the doorway and snapped his fingers for us, and we hurried over. Lilith was with him. “Circe,” he said into the phone, “you’re on speaker. Repeat what you just told me.”
“When Rasouli gave the flash drive to Joe, he mentioned the Book of Shadows. When Lilith sent us her scan she included a note saying that Arklight believes that the Book is the secret history of the Red Order and the Holy Agreement. It’s in ciphertext, however, and it’s unreadable. Arklight had it for years and couldn’t crack it. The same ciphertext is used in a book called the Voynich manuscript, which is in a library at Yale. We now have both complete texts, and the language is the same. With me so far?”
She didn’t wait for an answer and instead plunged ahead.
“Rasouli also mentioned the Saladin Codex, which is a text on mathematics. MindReader pulled multiple translations of it and just finished a comparative analysis. The Codex is a work of minor importance and one with a number of flaws. Now, from a distance, we have two unreadable books and one that is readable but seems to be entirely unrelated to this matter.”
“That’s from a distance,” I said. “How about close up?”
“Well… Rudy and I may have made a little progress,” continued Circe. “First, you have to understand that ciphertext isn’t a code. It’s mathematical. However, even when using MindReader to analyze the Codex for a key to the cipher we came up dry. But here’s the thing, and this changes everything… this is where the Voynich manuscript comes in.”
I looked at Church and saw him stiffen. Lilith, too. You could feel the tension crackling all around us.
“We think the Voynich manuscript was allowed to be found by the Order. It puts it out there so that anyone can find it and read it. Every page is on the Net. They don’t care if the average person finds it-it’s gibberish to them. However, if you have that as a reference, and you have access to the other two books, then you can read them all.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because,” said Circe, “we found the key to the cipher.”