“In your official capacity, have you ever accepted a bribe?”
“No. You can’t be a good cop if you’ve got your hand out.”
“Are you a gossiper, a slanderer?”
“No. But forget about that small stuff.” He leaned forward in his armchair and locked eyes with Hampton and said, “What about murder? I’ve killed two men. Can I kill two men and still be righteous? I don’t think so. That strains your thesis more than a little bit.”
Hampton looked stunned but only for a moment. He blinked and said, “Oh. I see. You mean that you killed them in the line of duty.”
“Duty is a cheap excuse, isn’t it? Murder is murder. Right?”
“What crimes were these men guilty of?”
“The first was a murderer himself. He robbed a series of liquor stores and always shot the clerks. The second was a rapist. Twenty-two rapes in six months.”
“When you killed these men, was it necessary? Could you have apprehended them without resorting to a gun?”
“In both cases they started shooting first.”
Hampton smiled, and the hard lines of his battered face softened. “Self-defense isn’t a sin, Lieutenant.”
“Yeah? Then why’d I feel so dirty after I pulled the trigger? Both times. I felt soiled. Sick. Once in a while, I still have a nightmare about those men, bodies torn apart by bullets from my own revolver ... ”
“Only a righteous man, a very virtuous man, would feel remorse over the killing of two vicious animals like the men you shot down.”
Jack shook his head. He shifted in his chair, uncomfortable with this new vision of himself. “I’ve always seen myself as a fairly average, ordinary guy. No worse and no better than most people. I figure I’m just about as open to temptation, just about as corrupt as the next joe. And in spite of everything you’ve said, I still see myself that way.”
“And you always will,” Hampton said. “Humility is part of being a righteous man. But the point is, to deal with Lavelle, you don’t have to believe you’re really a righteous man; you just have to be one.”
“Fornication,” Jack said in desperation. “That’s a sin.”
“Fornication is a sin only if it is obsessive, adulterous, or an act of rape. An obsession is sinful because it violates the moral precept ‘All things in moderation.’ Are you obsessed with sex?”
“I like it a lot.”
“Obsessed?”
“No.”
“Adultery is a sin because it is a violation of the marriage vows, a betrayal of trust, and a conscious cruelty,” Hampton said. “When your wife was alive, did you ever cheat on her?”
“Of course not. I was in love with Linda.”
“Before your marriage or after your wife’s death, did you ever go to bed with somebody else’s wife? No? Then you aren’t guilty of either form of adultery, and I know you’re incapable of rape.”
“I just can’t buy this righteousness stuff, this idea that I’m one of the chosen or something. It makes me queasy. Look, I didn’t cheat on Linda, but while we were married I saw other women who turned me on, and I fantasized, and I
wanted
them, even if I didn’t do anything about it. My
thoughts
weren’t pure.”
“Sin isn’t in the thought but in the deed.”
“I am not a saintly character,” Jack said adamantly.
“As I told you, in order to find and stop Lavelle, you don’t need to
believe
—you only need to
be.”
7
Rebecca listened to the car with growing dread. Now, there were other sounds coming from the undercarriage, not just the odd thumping, but rattling and clanking and grating noises, as well. Nothing loud. But worrisome.
We’re only safe as long as we keep moving.
She held her breath, expecting the engine to go dead at any moment.
Instead, the noises stopped again. She drove four blocks with only the normal sounds of the car and the overlaid moan and hiss of the storm wind.
But she didn’t relax. She knew something was wrong, and she was sure it would start acting up again. Indeed, the silence, the anticipation, was almost worse than the strange noises.
8
Still psychically linked with the murderous creatures he had summoned from the pit, Lavelle drummed his heels on the mattress and clawed at the dark air. He was pouring sweat; the sheets were soaked, but he was not aware of that.
He could smell the Dawson children. They were very close.
The time had almost come. Just minutes now. A short wait. And then the slaughter.
9
Jack finished his brandy, put the glass on the coffee table, and said, “There’s a big hole in your explanation.”
“And what’s that?” Hampton asked.
“If Lavelle can’t harm me because I’m a righteous man, then why can he hurt my kids? They’re not wicked, for God’s sake. They’re not sinful little wretches. They’re damned good kids.”
“In the view of the gods, children can’t be considered righteous; they’re simply innocent. Righteousness isn’t something we’re born with; it’s a state of grace we achieve only through years of virtuous living. We become righteous people by consciously choosing good over evil in thousands of situations in our day-to-day lives.”
“Are you telling me that God—or all the benevolent gods, if you’d rather put it that way—protects the righteous but not the innocent?”
“Yes.”
“Innocent little children are vulnerable to this monster Lavelle, but I’m not? That’s outrageous, unfair, just plain wrong.”
“You have an overly keen sense of injustice, both real and imagined. That’s because you’re a righteous man.”
Now it was Jack who could no longer sit still. While Hampton slumped contentedly in an armchair, Jack paced in his bare feet. “Arguing with you is goddamned frustrating!”
“This is my field, not yours. I’m a theologist, not legitimized by a degree from any university, but not merely an amateur, either. My mother and father were devout Roman Catholics. In finding my own beliefs, I studied every religion, major and minor, before becoming convinced of the truth and efficacy of voodoo. It’s the only creed that has always accommodated itself to other faiths; in fact, voodoo absorbs and uses elements from every religion with which it comes into contact. It is a synthesis of many doctrines that usually war against one another—everything from Christianity and Judaism to sun-worship and pantheism. I am a man of religion, Lieutenant, so it’s to be expected that I’ll tie you in knots on this subject.”
“But what about Rebecca, my partner? She was bitten by one of these creatures, but she’s not, by God, a wicked or corrupt person.”
“There are degrees of goodness, of purity. One can be a good person and not yet truly righteous, just as one can be righteous and not yet be a saint. I’ve met Miss Chandler only once, yesterday. But from what I saw of her, I suspect she keeps her distance from people, that she has, to some degree, withdrawn from life.”
“She had a traumatic childhood. For a long time, she’s been afraid to let herself love anyone or form any strong attachments.”
“There you have it,” Hampton said. “One can’t earn the favor of the
Rada
and be granted immunity to the powers of darkness if one withdraws from life and avoids a lot of those situations that call for a choice between good and evil, right and wrong. It is the making of those choices that enables you to achieve a state of grace.”
Jack was standing at the hearth, warming himself in the heat of the gas fire—until the leaping flames suddenly reminded him of the goblins’ eye sockets. He turned away from the blaze. “Just supposing I am a righteous man, how does that help me find Lavelle?”
“We must recite certain prayers,” Hampton said. “And there’s a purification ritual you must undergo. When you’ve done those things, the gods of
Rada
will show you the way to Lavelle.”
“Then let’s not waste any more time. Come on. Let’s get started.”
Hampton rose from his chair, a mountain of a man. “Don’t be too eager or too fearless. It’s best to proceed with caution.”
Jack thought of Rebecca and the kids in the car, staying on the move to avoid being trapped by the goblins, and he said, “Does it matter whether I’m cautious or reckless? I mean, Lavelle can’t harm me.”
“It’s true that the gods have provided you with protection from sorcery, from all the powers of darkness. Lavelle’s skill as a Bocor won’t be of any use to him. But that doesn’t mean you’re immortal. It doesn’t mean you’re immune to the dangers of
this
world. If Lavelle is willing to risk being caught for the crime, willing to risk standing trial, then he could still pick up a gun and blow your head off.”
10
Rebecca was on Fifth Avenue when the thumping and rattling in the car’s undercarriage began again. It was louder this time, loud enough to wake the kids. And it wasn’t just beneath them, any more; now, it was also coming from the front of the car, under the hood.
Davey stood up in back, holding onto the front seat, and Penny sat up straight and blinked the sleep out of her eyes and said, “Hey, what’s that noise?”
“I guess we’re having some sort of mechanical trouble,” Rebecca said, although the car was running well enough.
“It’s the goblins,” Davey said in a voice that was half filled with terror and half with despair.
“It can’t be them,” Rebecca said.
Penny said, “They’re under the hood.”
“No,” Rebecca said. “We’ve been moving around steadily since we left the garage. There’s no way they could have gotten into the car. No way.”
“Then they were there even in the garage,” Penny said.
“No. They’d have attacked us right there.”
“Unless,” Penny said, “maybe they were afraid of Daddy.”
“Afraid he could stop them,” Davey said.
“Like he stopped the one that jumped on you,” Penny said to her brother, “the one outside Aunt Faye’s place.”
“Yeah. So maybe the goblins figured to hang under the car and just wait till we were alone.”
“Till Daddy wasn’t here to protect us.”
Rebecca knew they were right. She didn’t want to admit it, but she
knew.
The clattering in the undercarriage and the thumping-rattling under the hood increased, became almost frantic.
“They’re tearing things apart,” Penny said.
“They’re gonna stop the car!” Davey said.
“They’ll get in,” Penny said. “They’ll get in at us, and there’s no way to stop them.”
“Stop it!” Rebecca said. “We’ll come out all right. They won’t get us.”
On the dashboard, a red warning light came on. In the middle of it was the word OIL.
The car had ceased to be a sanctuary.
Now it was a trap.
“They won’t get us. I swear they won’t,” Rebecca said again, but she said it as much to convince herself as to reassure the children.
Their prospects for survival suddenly looked as bleak as the winter night around them.
Ahead, through the sheeting snow, less than a block away, St. Patrick’s Cathedral rose out of the raging storm, like some great ship on a cold night sea. It was a massive structure, covering one entire city block.
Rebecca wondered if voodoo devils would dare enter a church. Or were they like vampires in all the novels and movies? Did they shy away in terror and pain from the mere sight of a crucifix?
Another red warning light came on. The engine was overheating.
In spite of the two gleaming indicators on the instrument panel, she tramped on the accelerator, and the car surged forward. She angled across the lanes, toward the front of St. Patrick’s.
The engine sputtered.
The cathedral offered small hope. Perhaps false hope. But it was the only hope they had.
II
The ritual of purification required total immersion in water prepared by the
Houngon.
In Hampton’s bathroom, Jack undressed. He was more than a little surprised by his own new-found faith in these bizarre voodoo practices. He expected to feel ridiculous as the ceremony began, but he didn’t feel anything of the sort because he had
seen
those Hellborn creatures.
The bathtub was unusually long and deep. It occupied more than half the bathroom. Hampton said he’d had it installed expressly for ceremonial baths.
Chanting in an eerily breathless voice that sounded too delicate to be coming from a man of his size, reciting prayers and petitions in a patois of French and English and various African tribal languages, Hampton used a bar of green soap—Jack thought it was Irish Spring—to draw
vèvès
all over the inside of the tub. Then he filled it with hot water. To the water, he added a number of substances and items that he had brought upstairs from his shop: dried rose petals; three bunches of parsley; seven vine leaves; one ounce of orgeat, which is a syrup made from almonds, sugar, and orange blossoms; powdered orchid petals; seven drops of perfume; seven polished stones in seven colors, each from the shore of a different body of water in Africa; three coins; seven ounces of seawater taken from within the territorial limits of Haiti; a pinch of gunpowder; a spoonful of salt; lemon oil; and several other materials.
When Hampton told him that the time had come, Jack stepped into the pleasantly scented bath. The water was almost too hot to bear, but he bore it. With steam rising around him, he sat down, pushed the coins and stones and other hard objects out of his way, then slid onto his tailbone, until only his head remained above the waterline.
Hampton chanted for a few seconds, then said, “Totally immerse yourself and count to thirty before coming up for air.”
Jack closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slid flat on his back, so that his entire body was submerged. He had counted only to ten when he began to feel a strange tingling from head to foot. Second by second, he felt somehow ...
cleaner...
not just in body but in mind and spirit, as well. Bad thoughts, fear, tension, anger, despair—all were leeched out of him by the specially treated water.