Cherry Bomb: A Siobhan Quinn Novel (21 page)

It is not known precisely how François-Honoré de Balfour learned the names, though his association with a handful of Jesuits would be sagely blamed.

And those ghouls who so cleverly fashioned these new “gods” also fashioned for themselves a new idol, their own Pietà, a
Beáta Maria Virgo Perdolens
to fit
their needs, and among men it became known as the Basalt Madonna,
id est Basaltes Maria Virgo.

When Isaac and Isobel Snow have finished their raw meal of the tongue, kidneys, ovaries, and heart of librarian, a woman lately of Providence, Rhode Island, they lick clean each other’s faces and hands before proceeding to the chamber where the priests have erected—to their exacting specifications—an altar of stacked skulls and blocks of volcanic rock mined from the quarries of Thok. The altar rests on a wide dais, and before the dais the priests have lain a bed of mammoth furs and tanned skins peeled from off half a hundred embalmed corpses. The smoky candles that illuminate the room have been made from the fat of both humans and ghouls.

“Are we ready?” asks Isobel. Before Isaac answers her, he examines the brass contraption near the altar. A single shaft of pale moonlight is shining down through a hole in the high domed roof of the chamber, and it falls across the contraption. It looks a bit like a sextant, a bit like a sundial, yet also suggests an elaborate clock.

“We are,” he says, and she smiles. It’s been a long and arduous path to this hour.

What they are about to do cannot ever be undone, which, obviously, is what makes what they are about to do sublime. The twins stand at the hairline threshold of the realization of a prophecy first uttered more than four million years ago, in the days after the end of the war with the Djinn, well in advance of the ghouls’ exposure to the tenets of Christianity and what they
made of it. The teachings of the abbot were only—to those who understood—a means to an end. A means to fulfillment of a prophecy that might never have had a
chance
of fulfillment had not a monk found a ghoul in a gutter and led it back to a monastery. There can be hope, and dreams, and the illusion of design, but it’s the accidents of history
propel
history, for history is no more than innumerable tangled strands of happenstance.

Isobel spares a glance at the well that opens just a couple of feet behind the bed that has been prepared for her and her brother. Even a mind as gleefully, unapologetically wicked as her own feels a slight shiver at the sight of the well, hewn from the native rock and eight feet across, the candlelight making no dint whatsoever in its implacable darkness. A mouth like that needs no teeth to be taken seriously. It was here long before this chamber was built, long before the city of Zin.

“Better, sister, that we don’t look at it.” He is thinking of basilisks and the gorgon Medusa, but he doesn’t tell her that.

“Yes,” she says, turning her face away from the well. “But—”

“It’s better,” he says again.

She undresses, and he follows her example. Their robes of yellow silk and wool damask form pretty puddles at their feet.

It is a shame,
she thinks,
this could not have been our wedding bed.

“It’s a shame,” says Isaac, “that
this
couldn’t have been our wedding bed,” and she smiles and nods. Isobel
smiles far more than Isaac; she sometimes thinks him far too serious for their own good. In all matters, it seems to her, a little levity is advisable.

The Basalt Madonna has been placed on the altar.

Half hidden in the ten arms of Mother Hydra rests the slain body of the messiah. Not the one that the monks of Constantinople hoped the Ghul would come, in time, to venerate. This is a messiah fit for the Lower Dream Lands. It might be the graven image of almost any ghoul, from its vaguely canine face to its hooves. Which is the point. It
might
be any ghoul, were any ghoul made perfect. There is no describing perfection; it is seen and it is understood. Or it isn’t. Over the centuries, many forgeries of the Basalt Madonna have surfaced. Some arose from within the blasphemous sect sometimes referred to (as in Balfour’s book) as the “Byzantine Ghul.” Others were created by charlatans and also by occultists hoping a copy might prove as powerful as the lost (or only hidden) original. They were wrong, for without the blessings bestowed upon the first, the true
Basaltes Maria Virgo
,
these counterfeits were no more than unnerving chunks of igneous stone. Here, in this place, at this appointed time, Isobel Snow lies in her twin’s embrace, watching as the candlelight plays over the angles and curves of the idol. The pyritized nautiloid crowning Mother Hydra, her golden gloriole, only the geometry of its spiral are wholly an expression of any known mathematics. That organic manifestation of the golden curve, circular arcs connecting the opposite corners of squares in the Fibonacci tiling—1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and 34. That
lone Paleozoic shell, pried from Turkish shale, is a comfort to any eye that lingers on the idol. Only it is not somehow alien to the sight of one born in the World Above or in the Dream Lands. For the hands of those who exist Outside had too great a hand in the conception and sculpting of the Madonna.

In their defeat and humiliation, a hierophant of the Ghul foretold of the coming of a mighty warrior priest who would lead them in a second war against their ancient foes and fully restore them to the waking world. The father and mother of this savior would be twins born of a mongrel bitch. And now the tribulations are ending, passing with the sacrifice of Hera Snow, grandmother of God. With the birth of Isobel and Isaac Snow.

In the shadow of the altar, he enters her, and she wraps her legs tightly about him. A distant piping music rises from the well, and the candles burn the sickly blue of the giant phosphorescent mushrooms in the garden beyond the city walls. There are no other words passed between the twins. There never will be. Once he’s come and is asleep beneath her, she gazes at the obsidian dagger waiting on the altar. It will cut her hands when she wields it, that her own blood will mingle with her brother’s when she slices his throat from ear to ear. She’ll be alone when their child is born, but Isaac always understood that he’d never live to see the exodus from Zin and the deliverance of his people and the Age of the Second Kingdom.

“I love you,” she whispers, knowing that she will never love another. Not even the daughter who will
grow within her to be born before another year is out. Soon, she will cast his bones upon the vales of Pnath, to join their mother’s.

“You’ll not ever be forgotten, Isaac,” she whispers.

Somewhere in the twilight that hangs always above the city, there’s the rumble of thunder and the sound of vast wings bruising the air. She kisses him, then rises to take up the knife.

When I was done reading, I rolled the pages up again, opened the Porsche’s glove compartment, and stuffed them inside. Charlee hadn’t said a word the entire time I’d been reading. The radio was on, tuned to a country station. Neko Case was singing about ragtime and snow.

“Where are we?” I asked him.

“Connecticut,” he replied, as if that said all that needed saying, then added,
“Qui Transtulit Sustinet
.
”

“What?”

“He who is transplanted still sustains. Apparently, it’s the state motto.”

“You speak Latin?”

“Girlbaby, this tongue of mine, you may live to learn that it’s no end of talented.”

To this day, I have no idea if he was making a pass at me.

“Connecticut already?” I asked, more than a little surprised. It would have taken me half an hour, at most, to read the story of Isobel and Isaac. We should have still been stuck in traffic in the Bronx or some shit. Instead, we were on a narrow two-lane highway, heading east, racing along between fields and patches of forest. At our backs, the sun was going down fast, and I glanced at the clock on
the dash. It was ten past four, when it shouldn’t have been much later than two in the afternoon. Had I nodded off? I’d lost hours and fuck knows how many miles.

“What the hell, Charlee?”

“Well, I cheated,” he smiled. “I took a shortcut. You’ll find I know a lot of those.” He smiled and turned the radio down a little. Neko Case seemed to fade into the distance.

“Where the did B
find
you?” I asked him and began going through the pockets of the dead woman’s peacoat. I took out the pack of Juicy Fruit, the cigarettes, and the lighter. I opened the yellow pack of gum. I hadn’t tasted Juicy Fruit since I was a little kid. So far as I knew, there was no rule against vampires chewing gum.

“He didn’t,” Charlee replied. “I found him.”

“Now, that’s gotta be a tale,” I said, unwrapping a stick of gum and popping it into my mouth. I offered Charlee a piece, but he passed.

“I’m afraid it’s not especially interesting,” he said, glancing at the rearview mirror. “I was in Scotland—dreadful fucking country, by the way—studying the utter messtasrophe Miss Crowley made of Boleskine House when he ran off to Paris in 1934, because McGregor—”

“You’re a witch?”

Charlee frowned slightly.

“I’m a
magician
,” he said and glared at me with his too-green eyes. “An accomplished, disciplined practitioner of the true science of the Magi,
not
some neo-pagan Wiccan wannabe waving crystals at trees.”

“Touchy, touchy,” I muttered, then spat the pale wad of Juicy Fruit out into my palm. It was much sweeter than
I remembered, or, more likely, my ramped-up taste buds made it seem that way. I rolled my window down and tossed the gum out. Cold, fresh air and autumn smells flooded the car.

“All right, so what was B doing in Scotland?”

“He never told me, and I never asked.”

“You’re right; this isn’t a very interesting story.” I rolled the window up again and checked under the seat to be sure the Madonna was still there.

“All right,” I said. “Forget how Mean Mr. B met Charlee with two
e
’s the magician. Here’s another one. How the fuck did he get you to volunteer for this suicide run?”

“You think that’s what it is?”

“Let’s say that I do. And let’s also note that I have more experience in that department than I care to admit.”

“You’ll get no argument there,” said Charlee. “First the Bride and then that whordeal up in Old Lady Drusneth’s place of business, you going all Arnold Schwarzenegger on her ass like that.”

“Whordeal? Did you just make that up?”

“Oh,” he went on, ignoring the question. “Plus, walking in on Capital E Penderghast the way you did, uninvited. Totally effing bravelicious, that one, or else an act of unbridled stuphoria.”

“You got it right the second time,” I said.

He had the headlights on now, and the scenery along the sides of the highway was beginning to fade into the gloom of twilight. I lit a cigarette and watched the speedometer; the needle hovered just below eighty miles an hour.

“We’re coming up on Waterbury,” Charlee said. “I know it’s probably not something you have to worry about anymore, but I’m about ready for good long pissaloo.”

“No, I don’t piss.”
Well,
I thought,
not usually
. I don’t think the vision piss counted.

“Lucky you.”

“Not especially.”

Yeah, okay, this is turning into a scene that could put a rock to sleep. Note to aspiring writers: Steer clear of long scenes in which your characters are stuck in automobiles. Anyway, as we sped along towards night and Boston, the twins and maybe worse things than the twins, I was beginning to find it difficult to think about much of anything but Selwyn. I knew that if I cut the crap and was honest with myself, I’d have to admit that the odds were she was dead or soon would be, and there probably wasn’t jack all I could do about it. Honesty was a goddamn rabid honey badger perched on my shoulder, whispering bitter nothings in my ear. Meanwhile, my old friend Denial was busy cowering beneath the seat with the Madonna.

“Also,” said Charlee, “I need more cigs.”

“I don’t have a plan,” I confessed.

“I know,” he replied. “Me, either.”

“Dude, we are so utterly screwed,” I said, and Charlee laughed. I shut my eyes, listening to the hum of the wheels against the road and the twang of the country music coming through the radio, and I tried to clear my head, focus, take stock of my situation, weigh my options (assuming I had any). On the one hand, from a certain angle, it almost seemed straightforward: I had the secret
ingredient to Thing One and Thing Two’s nefarious plan for global domination, even if I had no idea whatsoever how they planned to use it to put the smackdown on the Djinn and usher in the endless fun and games of Babes in Ghuland. They had Selwyn, and apparently I was, fuck me sideways, in love with her lying, conniving, cute-as-fuck, one-quarter-ghoul ass. It could all come down to a simple exchange, the Madonna for Selwyn, and never mind Charlee and B’s hard-on for vengeance. Maybe there was a stingy speck of honor in the twins, and they’d take their loving cup and send us on our merry way. Then we could beat a hasty retreat and . . . what?

Wait out the end of the world as we knew it in a ghoul-proof fallout shelter somewhere?

Or, contrariwise, it wasn’t simple at all. To start with, what the fuck was Pickman playing at, and what did he have planned for me? You’d think that the one thing he had to want
most of all
would be to keep the Basalt Madonna out of the grubby paws of the Snows, and yet . . . when I’d proposed the swap, all he’d had to say is, “Someone will be in touch.” He let me walk, knowing perfectly well where I’d likely, probably, almost inevitably be walking
to.
He’d told me all about how I was the fly in the ointment of the twins’ plans, but he hadn’t bothered to elaborate.

I shut my eyes, struggling to tie it all together, as if the days and nights since I’d met Selwyn were nothing more than the plot of some ill-conceived paperback. Death had not severed me from that all-too-human need to see patterns and solutions. If I squinted at it long enough and hard enough, wouldn’t all the pieces finally
fall into place, free of plot holes, unanswered questions, and inconvenient loose ends? Wasn’t I the clever, well-prepared author, a master of resolution and foresight?