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Chapter 17

 
"If blood were green, then green would be my favorite color."
—Conrad Bland

 

Jericho kept off the streets of Kether until nightfall. Then, just before midnight, he took up a vigil near a small all-night restaurant on the outskirts of town. Before long a police vehicle pulled up and two officers emerged. When they came out of the restaurant half an hour later he was waiting for them. There was a brief, bloodless, silent scuffle which attracted no attention from the other patrons, and a few moments later, after loading their bodies into the trunk and appropriating their hand weapons, he was driving along the almost-deserted highway from Kether to Yesod.

He gave some thought to bypassing Yesod entirely and driving on to Netsah, the next major city on the road to Tifereth, but he decided that the failure of the dead officers to report in to their headquarters would have aroused suspicion by then. The three hours it would take him to reach Yesod was about all the time he felt he could buy in this particular vehicle.

He was within fifteen miles of Yesod and could see the lights of the city twinkling in the distance when an unmarked car going toward Kether crossed over the median strip and began following him. A moment later a siren sounded, a light on the car's dashboard began flashing, and Jericho decided that he'd better pull over to the shoulder. Both cars came to a stop simultaneously, and three men immediately emerged from the unmarked vehicle and began approaching Jericho's car.

"Out," said one of the men.

Jericho emerged from his vehicle into the humid night

"What's the problem?" he asked.

"We'll ask the questions, if you don't mind," said the man. "What's your business in Yesod?"

"I'm a detective from Kether," said Jericho. "Officer Parnell Burnam. I'm on police business."

"What police business?'

"If you'll show me your credentials, I'll be happy to tell you," said Jericho.

The man pulled out a wallet and displayed a plastic card.

"No, good," said Jericho. "Being from a private security force from Tifereth doesn't give you the right to stop and question me."

"Jason," said the man to one of his companions, "put in a call to Kether and see if they've got a Parnell Burnam on their force. Call in the license plate, too."

"No sense going to all that trouble," said Jericho hastily. "Actually, I was supposed to be here a few hours ago. I stopped for a couple of drinks just outside Kether and kind of lost track of the time."

"That's your problem."

"Look," he persisted desperately. "You're going to get me in all kinds of trouble if they find out that I'm just now getting to Yesod. Let me just show you my ID and get out of here."

"Let's see it," said the man noncommittally.

Jericho fumbled nervously inside his jacket as if searching for his ID card, then calmly pulled out one of the hand weapons he had taken from the dead policemen and fired it at point-blank range. The man died without a sound, and an instant later his two companions also lay lifeless upon the highway.

Jericho turned to the police car, fired a burst into the radio, then searched the three corpses until he found the keys to the unmarked car. He pulled the bodies off the road just as a light drizzle began to fall, got in the car, and a few minutes later drove into Yesod.

Yesod was a compact little town of perhaps 100,000 people, an architectural hodgepodge of Victorian and Gothic buildings, of spires and steeples and cobblestone streets, all brand spanking new and all aspiring to look centuries old. He was a mile into the city when the radio on his dash panel began buzzing. Since he didn't know the car's call letters or passwords, he ignored it, and in less than another mile two police cars, sirens screaming, were hot on his heels.

He increased his speed on the wet street and began weaving through the sparse traffic, tires screeching as he turned every few blocks. But it didn't help, for now five cars were chasing him, waking the whole area with the ear-splitting sound of their sirens and the blinding flash of their lights. He knew they were in radio contact with each other, and that he'd be blocked off in another two minutes at most

He peeled into an alley, slowed down slightly, opened the door, grabbed his makeup bag, and jumped out, rolling into the shadows as he hit the ground. He was on his feet instantly, standing stock-still until a trio of police cars raced by him. He heard his car crash a few hundred feet up the alley, then raced between two Victorian houses and made his way to the sidewalk before anyone had emerged from the houses to see what had occurred.

He quickly untucked and unbuttoned his shirt and walked rapidly up to the end of the street, turning right for half a block and then turning again into the alley. A number of other men and women who had heard the crash were also approaching the site of the wreck, most of them in their nightclothes, some with umbrellas. He waited until he got within view of the police, then began buttoning his shirt back up.

Two of the cars had left the scene before he joined the little semicircle of onlookers, and he knew they were searching for the missing driver. One of the officers who had remained with the car asked the bystanders if they had seen anyone fleeing from the scene of the wreck, and dispersed them a few minutes later when no one was able to provide any information. Most of them hurried home to get out of the rain.

Jericho turned back the way he had come and walked away at a leisurely pace. Police cars were still patrolling the area, and he knew he would have to get off the streets shortly, before he attracted their attention. He spotted what seemed to be a church a few blocks up ahead and he headed toward it, planning to wait out the remainder of the morning there until the manhunt moved elsewhere.

When he arrived he saw that the symbols on the door and the portico were identical to the Church of Satan he had attended with Ubusuku back in Amaymon, and as he entered he looked about for some sign directing him to the Laymen's Gallery. There wasn't any.

He then opened a door that led to the main auditorium of file church. A man at the head of the aisle handed him a cheaply fashioned cloak and hood, both bearing Satanic and cabalistic designs, and he realized that there were no laymen in Yesod's Church of Satan.

The church was almost empty, and he sat atone in the back, his head lowered as if in prayer. He estimated that it would be dawn in another hour, and he decided to remain inside the church until early afternoon.

From time to time a man or woman would enter the church, approach the onyx altar, make some form of obeisance, and then take a seat in one of the pews. No priests were present, and the only staff member he could see was the one whose sole duty seemed to be the dispersal and retrieval of cloaks and hoods.

He remained where he was for more than an hour. Then, as the church got a little more crowded, he rose and walked to the back of the aisle, returning the cloak and hood and seeking out a restroom. He quickly altered his identity, then sat, fully clothed, in a toilet stall for another hour. When he reemerged he found a new man on duty, took a new cloak and hood, discovered that the church was more crowded and that most of the people were seated at the front, and joined them.

The number of congregants continued to increase, and by noon the church was almost entirely filled. Finally, at what he assumed to be high noon, a gong was struck and a black-hooded priest strode out to the altar.

"We will recite the Eighteenth Enochian Key," he announced, and began chanting in a language that was totally unfamiliar to Jericho but which the other congregants repeated unhesitatingly.

When they were done the gong was struck again, and the priest raised his hand for silence.

"O thou mighty light and burning flame of comfort, that unveilest the glory of Satan to the center of the Earth," he intoned, "be thou a window of comfort unto me. Move, therefore, and appear! Open the mysteries of your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the same, the true worshiper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell!"

The congregation responded with a number of heartfelt cries of "Hail Satan!" and "Regie Satanis!" and then fell silent again.

"My brethren," continued the priest, removing his hood, "I had a sermon prepared for today. I shall not give that sermon. We have more important things to do." He paused for effect, then thundered out his next sentence. "An assassin hired by the Republic to kill the Dark Messiah is in Yesod at this very minute!"

There was a stunned silence.

"He must be stopped!" cried the priest "He must not be allowed to reach Conrad Bland. It is said that he is a master of disguise. Therefore, you must disbelieve your neighbor, doubt your spouse, scrutinize your children. Shoot first and question later. It is far better that a thousand innocent men and women die than that this man be allowed to leave Yesod! If you hesitate, if you pause, you are no Satanist and you do not belong in this church!"

The people began shifting uneasily, scrutinizing those seated next to them.

"We must ask for help, for strength, for guidance!" cried the priest. "We must offer a Sacrifice of Supplication!" He looked out at his suddenly intense audience. "Who will stand among the chosen?"

Five young men, an old man, and a middle-aged woman stood up immediately. Three other women and another man rose a few seconds later.

"Excellent!" said the priest. "Let it never be said that the membership of our church lacked zeal!" He pointed to one of the young men, who approached the altar while the others sat back down.

"You shall sit at Lord Lucifer's left hand this day," said the priest, and the young man, wild-eyed and with a fanatical glow on his face, nodded vigorously.

"And who will strike the blow?" cried the priest. This time everyone but Jericho rose to his feet, and Jericho stood up a moment later.

The priest pointed to an elderly woman in the third row, who quickly approached him.

"With this hallowed blade shall you present Lord Lucifer with our supplication," he said, handing her an ornate dagger.

The young man took off his clothes and stood, hands clasped behind him, facing the audience.

"The congregation will join me in the Chant of Supplication," said the priest.

He began intoning another chant, and as the congregation joined in, the woman pulled her cloak tightly about her, completely covering her dress. Then she touched five imaginary points in the air with the dagger, placed it next to the young man's abdomen, and pushed it inward and upward. He screamed, gurgled, spit up a mouthful of blood, but remained standing.

"Satan smiles upon us!" cried the priest "For the more suffering Lord Lucifer enjoys, the more power shall he return to us for our efforts. Regie Satanis!"

The young man suddenly fell to his knees and stared glassily at the priest, who ignored him.

"Hear me, Lord Lucifer!" cried the priest "Heed our supplication, embrace our sacrifice! Make keen our eyes, make powerful our arms, bless our quest, and destroy our enemies!"

The young man fell on his face, twitched a few times, and then lay still.

The ceremony went on for another hour, turning into a grimmer, more sordid version of the Black Mass Jericho had witnessed in Amaymon.

This time the living altar was a fifteen-year-old girl who was carried to the front of the congregation, where she was stripped naked, strapped to the onyx altar, and sodomized by the priest and three of the congregants. When this was over she lay motionless except for the rapid rising and falling of her breasts, while black candles were affixed to her hands by means of dripping wax.

A bare-breasted nun appeared, urinated in a bowl, and placed the bowl on the girl's belly. After a few more chants, the three men and the priest drank from it.

The priest then took a whip from the nun and began whipping the girl and the three men, intoning still more chants with each stroke. A moment later a nude man in a goat's-head mask leaped into a pentagram which had been drawn with a black turnip dipped in the urine, took the whip from the priest, flayed the girl in earnest, and began a series of grotesque contortions which seemed to consist primarily of pelvic thrusts. The girl was sodomized again as the congregation chanted "Ave Satanis!" with each thrust. He then took an unlit candle, inserted it first into her vagina and then into her anus, and, finally withdrawing it, raced off into the darkness surrounding the pentagram.

The Satan-figure's departure seemed to signal the onset of an orgy among the entire congregation, and Jerico found himself forced to follow suit. He stripped himself naked, was handed a whip, followed the other members up to the altar, and tried to ignore the pain as his neighbors lashed out indiscriminately with their own whips. He found a reasonably attractive girl who was momentarily unencumbered by a partner and pulled her to the floor. He was about to have normal sex with her—as normal as was possible under these circumstances, anyway—when he looked about him and saw that normal sexual relations were definitely not the order of the day. He quickly turned the girl onto her belly and sodomized her, while she screamed Enochian chants at the top of her lungs.

More whips lashed him as he was withdrawing from her, and he found that his participation was far from finished. During the next half hour, with a variety of partners of both sexes, he found himself being expected to perform acts of degradation he hadn't believed existed outside of the twisted imaginations of some of the Republic's grosser pornographers. But since the alternative was the exposure of his identity, he undertook the task as coldly and efficiently as he undertook the more usual task of murder.

When he was beginning to wonder just how much more of this he could take (or, to be more accurate, how much more of it he could administer), the gong rang again and the congregants, with scarcely a glance at their momentary partners, walked back to their seats, physically and emotionally spent. They took a few minutes getting dressed, catching their breath, tending to minor abrasions, and otherwise composing themselves, then joined the priest in another twenty minutes of prayers and chants. Finally the priest exhorted them one last time to catch the assassin, after which he left the auditorium. A black-hooded woman carrying a medical kit approached the girl who had been the living altar and began ministering to her, two minor priests picked up the corpse of the young sacrifice and carried it off, and the people started filing out Jericho quickly worked his way into the midst of the crowd, handing back his cloak and hood on the way out.

Most of the congregants walked to a nearby parking lot, and Jericho lagged behind. When the last of them had driven off he inspected the few remaining empty cars, selected one that worked by computer-lock ignition rather than keys, quickly broke the code, and drove out of the lot He went north through the center of town, never moving out of the slowest lane of traffic, then veered to the west when he had passed out of the commercial and industrial areas.

After a few minutes he spotted a brightly labeled Air Parcel truck making a pickup. He slowed down and began discretely following it. The truck made several more stops, but he knew that it would eventually wind up at Yesod's airport, as indeed it did just after nightfall.

Jericho parked a goodly distance away from the air-freight terminal, walked unseen to the truck, waited until the driver climbed into the back to begin unloading his merchandise, and then dispatched him quickly and bloodlessly. He appropriated his uniform and identification card, then made his face up to resemble the driver's ID photo. He picked up a pair of small packages, locked the driver's body in the back of the truck, and walked into the freight dispatcher's office, his credentials pinned to a breast pocket. While waiting in line behind a number of other couriers he got a look at the flight schedule that was posted on the wall, and saw that a plane was leaving for Hod in the next half hour.

This was better than he had hoped for. Netsah was only two hundred miles north of Yesod, but Hod was within three hundred miles of Tifereth itself. If he could get on the plane, he could bypass Netsah and four other cities. He stepped out the door, changed the addresses on the tow parcels to read "Hod," then waited fifteen minutes and reentered the building. The line was gone and he walked straight up to the dispatcher.

"What have you got for me today?" asked the dispatcher pleasantly.

"Some priority stuff for Hod," he replied matter-of-factly.

"I don't know," said the dispatcher. "The plane is loaded up and is due to take off in just a few minutes."

"Look, I don't know what the hell is in these packages, but if they don't get to Hod tonight I could lose my job. Isn't there anything you can do?"

"They're that important?" said the dispatcher, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

Jericho nodded.

"All right," said the dispatcher. "I'll radio the pilot and tell him to open up a hatch and wait for you. Drive it out to Runway Seven."

Jericho thanked him profusely, went out to the truck, and drove to within forty yards of the plane that was gunning its engines on the runway marked "7." He got out of the cab, waved to the pilot, and tossed the packages and his makeup bag into the cargo hold.

"Are you clear?" called the pilot.

"All clear!" shouted Jericho above the drone of the engines.

He waited until the pilot hit the button that slowly closed the hatch door, then leaped upward and pulled himself into the hold just before the door slammed shut

He would have preferred to kill the pilot rather than chance discovery at the other end, but while he could pilot a spaceship he was totally ignorant of the workings of planetary airplanes.

A moment later he was airborne, heading for the distant city of Hod and wondering if the White Lucy's contact there was still alive.

 

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Framed