City of Night

chest.
    “What—you called me from the front porch?” Michael asked.
    Immense, fearsome, tattooed, Deucalion nodded to Lulana and Evangeline, and said, “ ‘God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.’”
    “Timothy,” Lulana said shakily, “chapter one, verse seven.”
    “I may look like a devil,” Deucalion told the sisters, to put them at ease, “but if I ever was one, I am not anymore.”
    “He’s a good guy,” Michael assured them. “I don’t know a Bible verse for the occasion, but I guarantee he’s a good guy.”
    Deucalion sat at the table, in the chair that Lulana recently had occupied. “Good evening, Pastor Laffite.”
    The minister’s eyes had been glazed, as if he’d been staring through the veil between this world and another. Now he focused on Deucalion.
    “I didn’t recognize Timothy one, verse seven,” Laffite said. “More of my program is dropping out. I’m losing who I am. Say me another verse.”
    Deucalion recited: “ ‘Behold, he is all vanity. His works are nothing. His molten images are wind and confusion.’”
    “I do not know it,” said the preacher.
    “Isaiah sixteen, verse twenty-nine,” said Evangeline, “but he’s tweaked it a little.”
    To Deucalion, Laffite said, “You chose a verse that describes… Helios.”
    “Yes.”
    Carson wondered if she and Michael could lower their guns. She decided that if it was wise to do so, Deucalion would already have advised them to relax. She stayed ready.
    “How can you know about Helios?” Laffite asked.
    “I was his first. Crude by your standards.”
    “But your program hasn’t dropped out.”
    “I don’t even have a program as you think of it.”
    Laffite shuddered violently and closed his eyes. “Something just went. What was it?”
    His eyes again moved rapidly up and down, side to side, under his lids.
    “I can give you what you want most,” Deucalion told him.
    “I think… yes… I have just lost the ability to switch off pain.”
    “Have no fear. I will make it painless. One thing I want from you in return.”
    Laffite said nothing.
    “You have spoken his name,” Deucalion said, “and have shown that in some other ways, your program no longer restrains you. So tell me… the place where you were born, where he does his work.”
    His voice thickening slightly as if points had been shaved off his IQ, Laffite said, “I am a child of Mercy. Mercy born and Mercy raised.”
    “What does that mean?” Deucalion pressed.
    “The Hands of Mercy,” said Laffite. “The Hands of Mercy and the tanks of Hell.”
    “It’s an old Catholic hospital,” Carson realized. “The Hands of Mercy.”
    “They closed it down when I was just a little kid,” Michael said. “It’s something else now, a warehouse. They bricked in all the windows.”
    “I could kill you all now,” Laffite said, but he did not open his eyes. “I used to want to kill you all. So bad, I used to want it, so bad.”
    Lulana began to weep softly, and Evangeline said, “Hold my hand, sister.”
    To Carson, Deucalion said, “Take the ladies out of here. Take them home now.”
    “One of us could take them home,” she suggested, “and one of us stay here to give you backup.”
    “This is between just me and Pastor Laffite. I need to give him a little grace, a little grace and a long rest.”
    Returning the Magnum to his holster, Michael said, “Ladies, you should take your praline pies with you. They don’t prove beyond doubt that you were here, but you should take them with you anyway.”
    As the women retrieved the pies from the refrigerator and as Michael shepherded them out of the kitchen, Carson kept the gun on Laffite.
    “We’ll meet later at your house,” Deucalion told her. “In a little while.”
    “ ‘Darkness was upon the face of the deep,’” Laffite said in his thicker voice. “Is that one, or have I remembered nothing?”
    “Genesis one, verse two,” Deucalion told him. Then he indicated with a gesture that Carson should leave.
    She lowered the pistol and reluctantly departed.
    As she stepped into the hall, she heard Laffite say, “He says we’ll live a thousand years. I feel as if I already have.”
     
     
     

Chapter 51
     
    In the secret drawing room, Erika considered speaking again to the occupant of the glass case.
    Without question, it had moved: a shadowy spasm within its amber shroud of liquid or gas. Either it had responded to her voice or