“So…Melissa asked you to help her fake a kidnapping?” I said.
“Yes. She had it all worked out and arranged down to the last detail.” Sister Josephine paused and looked at me steadily. “You mustn’t see her as a selfish girl, Mr. Taylor. She still loved her family, and hoped through her religious studies to find some way of saving them all from the consequences of their sins…even her grandfather. She truly believed that a sincere enough faith could break even a compact with the Devil. You might call her naïve. We see in her a pure and true faith that has humbled all of us. We would do anything for her. So when she begged and pleaded with us to help her escape her family home, we went along with it.
“She made it possible for four of us to approach the Hall unobserved and enter through the front door without setting off any of the alarms. Her grandfather had shared all his secrets with her, including Hall security, because he still believed he could talk her into taking control of the family empire. For such an experienced man, he could be very blind where his family was concerned. Melissa sent the servants away into other parts of the Hall, and even persuaded the Griffin to send Hobbes down into the city for the evening, on some spurious but plausible errand. She was always scared of Hobbes and the way he seemed to know everything that was going on…”
I nodded. I’d always known it had to be some kind of inside job. “Why did she need the four of you there? Why not just walk out?”
“We were there to leave specific evidence of our presence,” said Sister Josephine. “A footprint here, a handprint there, that sort of thing. I told you Melissa thought of everything. It was all misdirection, you see. And…there was always the chance of someone seeing something they shouldn’t, then we might have to fight our way out. I thought of that even if Melissa didn’t.”
“But why was she so keen to be thought of as a kidnap victim rather than just another teenage runaway?”
“To confuse the issue. So the Griffin would be forced to spread his forces thinly, chasing every possibility.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll buy that. But I’m still having trouble understanding why such a gentle, meek, and mild little soul like Melissa would want to join an order that specialises in destruction and bloody vengeance.”
“Think it through,” said Sister Josephine. “Melissa did. She needed an order strong enough to protect her from her grandfather’s wrath if he should ever find out where she was hiding. She hoped her grandfather would understand her rejection of his empire, and accept it, but the Griffin…has always been a very proud and vindictive man. Melissa knew there was no point in entering a convent if her grandfather could simply send his people in to drag her out again. She knew our reputation and hoped that would be enough to give even the Griffin pause.”
“You have to be straight with me here,” I said. “How sincere are you, in accepting meek and mild Melissa into your order? Are you just using her to strike a blow at her grandfather?”
“No,” Sister Josephine said immediately. “Melissa’s faith is real and that is the only reason we ever accept anyone into our church.”
“I need to talk to her,” I said. “In person. To validate your story and to discuss with her what the hell I’m going to do next. I said right from the beginning I wouldn’t drag her back home against her will…but Paul’s death changes everything. Jeremiah will never stop looking for Melissa now. She’s the only grand-child he’s got. Either he’ll want to bring her back into the family, or if he believes she’s completely lost to him…he might decide she’d be better off dead, so he can go on living.”
“That’s why we’re keeping Melissa in a safe house, for the time being,” said Sister Josephine. “Connected to, but quite separate from, this church. Security begins at home. In case anyone came here looking for her.”
“Someone like me?” I said.
“Of course. We were all very…concerned when we heard the Griffin had hired you to find his grand-daughter. Your gift’s reputation goes before you. So we chose a pocket dimension for Melissa’s temporary bolt-hole. Even you couldn’t find her there.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” I growled. I wasn’t sure at all, but in my job it’s important to keep up appearances.
Sister Josephine stood up abruptly, so I did, too. She drew the Hand of Glory from inside her habit and lit the candles on the fingers with a quick gesture. She smiled at me suddenly, and it was a warm and even kindly smile.
“Come with me, John. It’s time for you to meet Melissa Griffin. The most Christian soul I have ever met.”
She used the Hand of Glory on her study door, and it groaned loudly in its frame, as though protesting. The door swung open before us, and we stepped through, and immediately we were in another place. The ground shook briefly under my feet, as though settling into place, and the air was suddenly hot and humid. Sweat sprang out on my bare face and hands, and I had to struggle to get my breath in the thick moist air. It stank of brimstone and foulness and blood. We were standing in a simple chapel, with rows of basic wooden pews and a bare functional altar at the far end. The crucifix above the altar had been turned upside down.
The pews were full of nuns, but they were all dead. There might have been a dozen or more. It was hard to tell now. They’d all been murdered, savagely, inhumanly. Torn quite literally limb from limb, gutted, beheaded. Blood soaked the pews and the floor, and body parts lay scattered everywhere. The stench grew worse, the more I breathed it.
I moved slowly down the central aisle, heading for the altar, and Sister Josephine was right there at my side. I glanced at her, to see how she was holding together. Her face was terribly cold with a controlled fury, and she had a machine pistol in each hand now. Fourteen severed heads had been impaled on the carved wooden guard before the altar, still wearing their wimples, their faces stretched and contorted by their final horrified screams. The altar itself had been thickly smeared with blood and shit.
“Do you see Melissa here anywhere?” I said, keeping my voice low.
“No. She’s not here.” Sister Josephine looked quickly back and forth, her machine pistols tracking with her, desperate for a target.
“Who else could get in here?”
“No-one. Just me. That’s the point.” Sister Josephine made a visible effort to calm herself. “Only I know how to operate the Hand of Glory, to open the door between dimensions.”
“So, to track Melissa here, and then force a way in and do…all this, means whoever beat us here has to be someone of considerable power.” I thought about that, and the more I considered it the less I liked it. If this was the same Someone who’d been interfering with my gift, that meant they’d been one step ahead of me right from the beginning.
“If all they wanted was Melissa, why take the time to do this?” said Sister Josephine, her voice tight and strained. “Why mutilate these Sisters and desecrate the altar?”
“Has to be someone who takes the Christian faith seriously, to hate it this much,” I said.
Sister Josephine looked at me seriously. “I smell brimstone.”
“So do I.”
“Do you think Melissa is dead?”
“No,” I said immediately. “Or they’d have left her body here for us to find, looking like the rest. No, she was taken away from here so I couldn’t have her. Someone who didn’t want me involved from the very beginning. I hate to say it, but all of this could be Jeremiah’s work. If he didn’t trust me to bring his grand-daughter back to him. The man made a deal with the Devil, and this looks like the Devil’s work to me.”
I broke off as something in the chapel changed. The stench was suddenly almost overpowering, and I could hear the buzzing of flies. All the flowers in the chapel burst into flames, burning fiercely in their vases. It felt like there was Someone else in the place with us…and then Sister Josephine and I moved quickly to stand back-to-back, as one by one the dead nuns in the pews came slowly, horribly, to life again. Limbless torsos lurched out into the aisle, while hands pulled severed arms along the floor towards us. Lengths of purple intestines curled slowly on the floor like meaty snakes. Blood pattered down from the ceiling. And all the severed heads spiked on the wooden guard began to speak as one.
Sister Josephine, John Taylor. Come on down! There’s a special place in Hell reserved just for you, and all the heroes who failed to protect those they swore to save! You’ll like it in Hell, John. All your friends and family are here…
I laughed right back in their faces. “Save your mind games for someone who gives a damn. What were you planning to do with all these bits and pieces? Nudge us to death?” I looked at Sister Josephine. “Don’t let the bastard get to you. He’s only messing with us, hoping to break our spirit. I can deal with this.”
I fired up my gift, and straightaway found the very basic magic that was reanimating the dead nuns. We’d triggered the spell by entering the chapel, and it was the easiest thing in the world to push the switch back into the off position. The spell shut itself down, and the dead bits and pieces were still again, their dignity restored. Sister Josephine put her machine pistols away. She was breathing hard, but otherwise seemed unmoved.
“Who could have done this?” she said, sounding very dangerous indeed. “And where do I have to go to find him and make him pay?”
“Griffin Hall’s probably your best bet,” I said. “But since my gift seems to operate fine here, why don’t I make sure?”
I forced my inner eye all the way open, and my Sight showed me a vision of the recent past. I saw who it was who had come here, and done all this, and taken Melissa Griffin away…and just like that, a whole lot of things suddenly made sense.
ELEVEN
Hell to Pay
I
t’s never easy arguing with a nun, but it’s harder than usual when she’s waving a machine pistol around to emphasize her point. Sister Josephine was mad as hell because I wouldn’t tell her what I’d seen in my Vision, but I couldn’t tell her. Not until I had proof to back it up. Some things are just too weird to say out loud, even for the Nightside. Sister Josephine finally settled for insisting on coming back to Griffin Hall with me, and I couldn’t find it in me to say no. Not while we were surrounded by the dismembered bodies of her fellow Sisters. Besides, she had the Hand of Glory, the only way of getting us all the way across the Nightside to Griffin Hall in a single moment. So I agreed, and Sister Josephine made me wait while she loaded herself up with extra guns, grenades, and incendiaries, just in case. I had to smile.
“I really must introduce you to my girl-friend. You have so much in common.”
The nun snorted loudly. “I seriously doubt it. Right, that’s it. I’m ready. Time to go.”
She looked around the deserted chapel one last time, making herself look at every dead and mutilated body so that she’d be in a proper frame of mind when she arrived at Griffin Hall. And then she lit the candles on the Hand’s waxy fingers, and stabbed them at the door before her. The heavy wood bulged and rippled, shaking in its frame as though scared of what was being asked of it, and it swung open abruptly, revealing only darkness beyond. I walked through with Sister Josephine close on my heels.
But when I reappeared, I was still a long way short of Griffin Hall. I was right in the middle of the jungle surrounding the Hall, and there was no sign of Sister Josephine anywhere. My first instinct was to retreat back through the door, but when I looked behind me it was gone, too. Thin shafts of shimmering moonlight drifted down through the thick overhead canopy, painting silvery highlights on the trembling leaves and slowly stirring vegetation. There were strange lights in between the trees, and slow, heavy sounds deep in the earth. And all around me, slow, malevolent movement in the jungle, as it realised who it had at its mercy.
The Hall’s defences must be working overtime. They couldn’t stop a powerful working like the Hand of Glory, but they could keep me out of the Hall itself, by dumping me here. In the jungle. Where the plants are always hungry…
The vegetation was rising up all around me now, flowers opening out to reveal sharp teeth and spiny maws, barbed branches reaching towards me, lianas uncurling like strangling ropes. Even the trees were wrenching their roots up out of the wet earth in their eagerness to get at me. The jungle remembered me and hated me with all of its parts in a slow, cold rage.
I was surrounded by enemies and a long way from help. Situation normal in my line of business. I fished a couple of basic incendiaries out of my coat-pockets, primed them quickly, and tossed them where I thought they’d do the most good. Explosions rocked the jungle and lit up the night, and rustling vegetation everywhere flared up into wildly burning shapes. They shook back and forth, trying to throw off the flames that were consuming them, but only succeeded in spreading the fires further. The rising light pushed back the night, giving me a better look at my surroundings. Griffin Hall was just visible through the trees, right up at the top of the hill. It wasn’t that far. I could make it.
The jungle heaved all around me, the trees beating at the flames with heavy branches, while everything else withdrew out of the fire’s reach. Thin reedy screams filled the night as unnatural plants were consumed by artificial fires. But the flames were already dying down, and soon there would be nothing left to keep the jungle at bay. Except…the plants seemed as much afraid of the fire’s light as the heat. I raised my gift and found a place outside the Nightside where the sun was shining bright; and I reached out and brought the sunlight to me. A great circle of blindingly bright light stabbed down from above, surrounding me with warm, healthy daylight.
The jungle hated it. Even as I screwed up my eyes against the unaccustomed glare, the night-dwelling plants shrivelled and shrank back from the daylight, shrinking in upon themselves. Flower petals darkened and fell away, tree trunks blistered, and branches hauled themselves back out of the scorching light. Leaves curled up, lianas retreated back into the shadows, and some of the trees actually groaned under the impact of the daylight.